ABOUT THE BOOK

The body of a murdered Korean liquor store owner is unearthed at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. Against a background of increasing racial tension, black private eye Ivan Monk searches for the killer. Then another body turns up. And while the BI and the Rolling Daltons, the largest gang in the city, dog his trail, Monk questions whether there's more than mere murder happening. Questions that wealthy power broker Maxfield O'Day may have the answers to.

Monk is propelled towards a conclusion that may foment another Violent Spring in the tarnished City of Angels.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

'In the tradition of Hammett's Continental Op, Ivan Monk takes on a corrupt world. He's ready to go down fighting and he makes us feel that the war he's waging is for our own salvation.' - Walter Mosley

"Tough, smart and unabashedly political." - Gar Anthony Haywood

'Ivan Monk traverses the terrain of the boosters and mercenaries who run Blade Runnerville. He is an unbowed, post modern protagonist who, with brains and brawn, confronts this Hobbesian universe in his quest for the answers. Violent Spring peels away the studded rind of the golden orange, exposing its bete noire core.' - Mike Davis

'Gary Phillips is my kind of crime writer and Ivan Monk my kind of detective...an unbeatable combination' - Sara Paretsky