The times, they are a-changing in Phillips’s outstanding sequel to One-Shot Harry.

It’s August 1965: Vietnam is heating up; the civil rights movement is marching forward. Escalating tensions between the police and Black Americans have boiled over most recently in the Watts Riots. Black photographer Harry Ingram is in Los Angeles to document the unrest and winds up capturing the police shooting of unarmed activist Faraday Zinum...Phillips folds real historical figures, including TV journalist Louis Lomax, and events into a complex narrative of shifting alliances that captures the urgency and volatility of the mid-’60s. The results rank with the best of Walter Mosley in the canon of Los Angeles noir.

- Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Violent Spring, Gary Phillips’ first novel published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. The Washington Post and Booklist named One-Shot Harry as one of the best mysteries of 2022. He was also a writer and co-producer on Snowfall, streaming on Hulu about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central.