Only the Wicked [Hardcover]

Gary Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2000

Old Man Spears was a quiet, regular attendee at the Abyssinia Barber Shop, a man nobody paid much attention to until the day he dropped dead, while the other regulars -- including Ivan Monk -- sat around playin' the dozens and cracking jokes on one another.

It turns out Spears played in the famed Negro Baseball Leagues along with Monk's cousin, Kennesaw Riles, who had been ostracized by the family for his questionable testimony, which put a political firebrand in a southern prison more than 25 years before. Then Riles dies, but not from natural causes.

As Monk becomes immersed in finding out who murdered his cousin, his mother is brutally attacked, and the case turns personal. Events take him to the Mississippi Delta to solve these crimes. There Monk hunts for a killer and crosses paths with the remnants of the racist Southern Citizens League -- while the wind wails Charlie Patton's "Killin' Blues," a mythical lost recording whose lyrics haunt the case.

In his fourth Ivan Monk mystery, Gary Phillips again gives the reader a terse story filled with twists, turns, quixotic characters and the pounding tempo of Los Angeles, combined with the slower tempo of the South, where only the wicked know the answers in the deadly magnolia nights.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

While Ivan Monk, an African American private investigator, swaps stories with cronies in a Los Angeles barber shop, an elderly former player in the Negro Leagues collapses and dies in front of them. Intrigued by the man's hitherto unknown past and because the old man played ball with Ivan's cousin, Ivan investigates. His cousin, ostracized since his "anti-black" testimony resulted in a long prison term for an aspiring politician, attends the funeral and then is murdered (casting suspicions on the first death). Full of neighborhood activity, baseball and jazz history, and general comments on the human condition, this fourth title in the series (after Bad Night Falling) belongs in most larger collections; fans of African American mysteries will certainly enjoy.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Phillips' Ivan Monk series continues to receive far less attention than it deserves. The author's grasp of Southern California politics is razor sharp, and his evocation of inner-city L.A. is rivaled only by Gar Anthony Haywood in his Aaron Gunner series. Haywood's Gunner and Phillips' Monk, in fact, are similar characters: both fiercely independent African American private investigators, loyal to their families, proud of their community, uncanny in their ability to detect phoniness. This time Monk finds himself in the middle of a mystery that stretches from the Negro Baseball Leagues to the Mississippi Delta and back to Monk's own loved ones. The murder of Monk's cousin, former Negro Leaguer Kennesaw Riles, ostracized by the family for his spurious testimony against a black civil rights leader, takes Monk to Mississippi, where the trail leads to blues legend Charlie Patton and the racist Southern Citizens League. Phillips puts the historical material to good use, and he builds suspense effectively. Only the occasionally clumsy dialogue--too much backstory passed off as conversation--detracts from an otherwise gripping tale starring a genuinely charismatic hero. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Write Way Publishing (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885173644
• ISBN-13: 978-1885173645
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,552,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rich deep mystery, October 20, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Only the Wicked (Hardcover)

In Los Angeles' Abyssinia barbershop, Marshall Spears is the oldest of the regulars who meet there. When he becomes excited over a radio interview of former Negro League baseball player, Kennesaw Riles, Ivan Monk takes notice especially since the interviewee is a relative. However, everyone in the shop that day takes notice when Marshall suddenly drops dead.

Monk and his associates try to do the right thing for Marshall, but are amazed to learn that he was a former baseball player. At his funeral, several of his old teammates including Kennesaw arrive to pay their respects. A few days later, Kennesaw is dead and police officer Rogers believes someone murdered him because he died from taking too much dioxin. Since it appears that the culprit knew the victim, Rogers turns towards Monk's mother Nona who had the motive and the means. Nona, a nurse, never forgave Kennesaw for lying on the witness stand against a rising black politician. Monk, a private detective, begins to make inquiries into the death of his relative.

What makes the Monk mysteries magnificent is the rich characterizations that allow the audience an opportunity to deeply look inside an African-American community. Besides telling a fabulous investigative tale, Gary Phillips talent lies in his ability to bring home the needs, desires, and ambitions of that community through the real people he describes. The latest tale, ONLY THE WICKED, contains a superb story line that includes a well written sleuthing adventure and homage to the Negro Leagues with references to baseball players like the original Flash, Cool Papa Bell. As usual, Mr. Phillips provides fans with a great trash-talking novel.

Harriet Klausner