Reviews
bangers:Rafael "Saint" Santián and his elite team of cops take on gangstas and an ambitious female district attorney running for mayor in Phillips's gritty and violent tour of the underbelly of Los Angeles. The TRASH unit -- Tactical Resources Against Street Hoodlums -- really is a gang itself, as deadly as anyone else on the street.
"When they bent the rules it was because the rules were hamstringing them from achieving the greater goal. Yeah, they copped some extras for themselves, but who didn't? It was drug money, whore money, laundered money." The main plot is standard B-movie material, merely a neat frame for a series of engaging set pieces, but the subplots allow Phillips to show that he knows his turf and its wars.
Pulling a large cast from all layers of society, from bangers with the Crazy Nines to bikers wearing the Viking colors and hip-hop execs at Def Ritmo Records, he smoothly follows one character or another, whether Saint or the biker Red Dog or the Korean-American assistant D.A. shacking with Red Dog's mama. Saint even cruises down to Tijuana for some additional fun-and-gun action. As in his Las Vegas-based Martha Chainey mysteries (High Hand, etc.), Phillips doesn't worry much about loose ends, but keeps all the clips loaded. A trademark cliffhanger of an ending suggests that Saint and his crew may be series bound.--Publisher's Weekly
Only the Wicked:
"Author Gary Phillips holds all the aces in High Hand, this
twisty heist thriller in which everyone is a crook and heroes are
few."--Sun Sentinel "The story is as fresh and believable as today's headlines. It
delves into the sordid underside of our society and holds it up in all its
ugly manifestations."--Sally Fellows, Black Raven Press "Phillips gives you all the necessary elements: thugs all over the
place with automatic weapons, beautiful women who always want to have sex, and
dishonesty and deceit on nearly every other page. The product of the
complex, multilayered plot and Phillip's good writing is a novel that is an
absurd yet frank take on the the world of the modern superstar
athlete."--The Washington Post
"Ivan Monk is ready to go down fighting, and he makes us feel that the
war he's waging is for our own salvation."--Walter Mosely, author of
Walking the Dog and the Easy Rawlins mysteries.
"...gripping tale starring a genuinely charismatic hero."--Booklist
"Gary Phillips is my kind of crime writer and Ivan Monk is my kind of
detective..an unbeatable combination."--Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I.
Warshawski mystery series.
"...he creates a series of remarkably dimensional set pieces. Then
he populates them with characters of substance whose language is often and
rich and pungent and the food they consume...[Monk] is the only PI real enough
to suffer post-traumatic stress..."--Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times
"Talking is one of the many things Monk is good at, and the conversation
in 'Only the Wicked' is a delight: sometimes folk-poetic, occasionally
raunchy, always expressive."--Tom Nolan, Orange County Metro
"Phillips combines politics and storytelling as well as any writer of
crime fiction."--Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
High Hand:
"Chainey's too good to give up."--Kirkus Reviews
"Martha Chainey, athletic, gun-toting, ex-showgirl and mob money courier,
makes her hard-hitting debut in this tawdry heist thriller, in which everybody
is a crook...a fast-moving, uncomplicated plot...[and] sordid
tale..."--Publishers Weekly
"Gary Phillips writes with raw power...you're about to take a wild
ride."--Jan Burke, Edgar Award-winning author of Bones
The Jook:
"[Phillips'] is a voice that should be heard and celebrated."
--Michael Connelly, author of A Darkness More than Night.
"Zelmont [Raines]...is a Hall of Fame-quality asshole, unremittingly
homophobic, misogynistic and self-absorbed. But he makes no excuses for
himself, and neither does Phillips. the result, in addition to some
entertaining reading, is a precious quality rarely found in crime novels:
ambiguity."--LA Weekly
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