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Ivan Monk #1
Violent Spring
When the body of a murdered Korean shopkeeper is discovered during a South Central groundbreaking ceremony, private investigator Ivan Monk is thrown into a maze that pits him against the gangs, cops, power brokers, and leaders of Los Angeles. Original.
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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316 people want to read
About the author
Gary Phillips
202 books230 followersGARY PHILLIPS has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 25, 2019
”Pico Boulevard was a sort of Maginot line of the Mid-City area, a buffer of the better-offs against the deprived hoards. South of it, along this stretch, there were the homes and apartments of mostly black working class folks. The populace included quite a few young people, and, as fall-out from the Federal cutbacks in social spending during the 80s, several were members of the Rolling Daltons. Not that Monk laid the entire blame for gangsterism at the feet of men like Reagan and Bush. Still, he had to admit that they had set a fine example as the biggest gangbangers of all with their violent escapades in Grenada, Libya, Panama and Iraq-all while the cities went to hell.”
Private Investigator Ivan Monk, A.K.A. Gary Phillips, had a few issues with President Reagan. The “Great Communicator” had only one message for the mentally ill and the fiscally disadvantaged... you are on your own. After all, if the government would quit being a crutch, they would just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, right?
I remember I was on a business trip to the Bay Area, probably sometime in the early 1990s. I’d crossed the bridge to stop in a few bookstores in Oakland. It was like entering a refugee camp. The sidewalks were completely covered with homeless people; only a narrow path had been left for people to walk and still enter the businesses along the streets. I parked my rental car and was immediately hit up by a couple of men, one black, one white, who told me they would watch my car for $20. I negotiated them down to $12, but then realized, after looking into their faces, that $20 worth of “protection” might be a whole lot better than $12. The desperation of all these people crowding the Oakland streets was palatable. I’d never experienced anything like it before.
A friend of mine at one of the bookstores told me that San Francisco had scooped up all the homeless in Golden Gate Park, thrown them on a bus, and dumped them out in Oakland. Most of the people I was seeing out there, my friend went on to explain, were mentally ill people put on the street from the Reagan mental health budget cuts in the 1980s.
If there were this many in Oakland, how many more would there be in L.A. and across the rest of the United States?
Philips wasn’t shy about infusing his books with politics, but then how could a black detective be on the streets of L.A. without realizing that politics were contributing to most of the messes he was asked to clean up? When the body of a Korean American businessman was found, Ivan Monk was hired not only by the Korean American Merchants Group but also by SOMA (Save Our Material Assets), a group made up of community leaders, business people, and politicians. That acronym had a different meaning for Monk than what it had for the people who chose it. ”SOMA was the name of the drug people took to induce docility in Aldous Huxley’s classic book of a corporate future England, Brave New World, a book Monk reread two times as he worked his way around the world, and half again when he was an engine mechanic as a merchant seaman.”
Hard not to see that and think... huh, wonder what they were really up to?
Speaking of politics changing the terrain of the city that Monk has to navigate, the LAPD officers had just been aquitted of the charges of excessive force against an African American motorist named Rodney King. By excessive force, they really meant beating the living daylights out of the young man. The video footage of that encounter between LA’s finest and King was frankly horrific to watch. It’s hard to investigate a murder when riots were running rampant throughout the parts of the city that Monk needed to conduct his investigations.
Interestingly enough, I was in L.A. right at the tail end of the riots. A limo was taking my boss and I and our significant others to Disneyland. It was surreal walking around an amusement park while dirty smoke plumes hung over the city. Something significant was happening to that city, and it was as if I was on another planet, peering at it through a telescope.
Monk drove a 1964 Ford Galaxie, fully restored, gorgeous, about as noticeable on a tail job as the Ferrari Tom Selleck drove in Hawaii. Coincidentally, I learned to drive in my grandmother’s 1964 Ford Galaxie. It had a .390 four barrel engine, and that car could flat scoot when the need arose, or any time I wanted to feel the surge of the engine press me back in the seat. Besides good taste in cars, he also had good taste in women. His girlfriend was a gorgeous Japanese-American, who happened to be a judge and also Monk’s go-to for legal advice. It should be no surprise that he needed lots of legal advice.
The closer Monk got to the truth the more strange the behavior became of all the peripheral people to the murder. Wouldn’t it be easier to just make it a drug thing and blame it on the Rolling Daltons or The Swans or The Delnines? Something about this whole thing was making some of the politicians and the business leaders nervous. If Monk was supposed to put the right face on the investigation, they picked the wrong man if they thought he’d dig up anything but the truth. Reading this book for me was like a time capsule from 1992. Phillips put me right back there in the middle of an unsettling time and made me see it up close and personal. I didn’t need my telescope. I just needed to open my eyes.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Private Investigator Ivan Monk, A.K.A. Gary Phillips, had a few issues with President Reagan. The “Great Communicator” had only one message for the mentally ill and the fiscally disadvantaged... you are on your own. After all, if the government would quit being a crutch, they would just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, right?
I remember I was on a business trip to the Bay Area, probably sometime in the early 1990s. I’d crossed the bridge to stop in a few bookstores in Oakland. It was like entering a refugee camp. The sidewalks were completely covered with homeless people; only a narrow path had been left for people to walk and still enter the businesses along the streets. I parked my rental car and was immediately hit up by a couple of men, one black, one white, who told me they would watch my car for $20. I negotiated them down to $12, but then realized, after looking into their faces, that $20 worth of “protection” might be a whole lot better than $12. The desperation of all these people crowding the Oakland streets was palatable. I’d never experienced anything like it before.
A friend of mine at one of the bookstores told me that San Francisco had scooped up all the homeless in Golden Gate Park, thrown them on a bus, and dumped them out in Oakland. Most of the people I was seeing out there, my friend went on to explain, were mentally ill people put on the street from the Reagan mental health budget cuts in the 1980s.
If there were this many in Oakland, how many more would there be in L.A. and across the rest of the United States?
Philips wasn’t shy about infusing his books with politics, but then how could a black detective be on the streets of L.A. without realizing that politics were contributing to most of the messes he was asked to clean up? When the body of a Korean American businessman was found, Ivan Monk was hired not only by the Korean American Merchants Group but also by SOMA (Save Our Material Assets), a group made up of community leaders, business people, and politicians. That acronym had a different meaning for Monk than what it had for the people who chose it. ”SOMA was the name of the drug people took to induce docility in Aldous Huxley’s classic book of a corporate future England, Brave New World, a book Monk reread two times as he worked his way around the world, and half again when he was an engine mechanic as a merchant seaman.”
Hard not to see that and think... huh, wonder what they were really up to?
Speaking of politics changing the terrain of the city that Monk has to navigate, the LAPD officers had just been aquitted of the charges of excessive force against an African American motorist named Rodney King. By excessive force, they really meant beating the living daylights out of the young man. The video footage of that encounter between LA’s finest and King was frankly horrific to watch. It’s hard to investigate a murder when riots were running rampant throughout the parts of the city that Monk needed to conduct his investigations.
Interestingly enough, I was in L.A. right at the tail end of the riots. A limo was taking my boss and I and our significant others to Disneyland. It was surreal walking around an amusement park while dirty smoke plumes hung over the city. Something significant was happening to that city, and it was as if I was on another planet, peering at it through a telescope.
Monk drove a 1964 Ford Galaxie, fully restored, gorgeous, about as noticeable on a tail job as the Ferrari Tom Selleck drove in Hawaii. Coincidentally, I learned to drive in my grandmother’s 1964 Ford Galaxie. It had a .390 four barrel engine, and that car could flat scoot when the need arose, or any time I wanted to feel the surge of the engine press me back in the seat. Besides good taste in cars, he also had good taste in women. His girlfriend was a gorgeous Japanese-American, who happened to be a judge and also Monk’s go-to for legal advice. It should be no surprise that he needed lots of legal advice.
The closer Monk got to the truth the more strange the behavior became of all the peripheral people to the murder. Wouldn’t it be easier to just make it a drug thing and blame it on the Rolling Daltons or The Swans or The Delnines? Something about this whole thing was making some of the politicians and the business leaders nervous. If Monk was supposed to put the right face on the investigation, they picked the wrong man if they thought he’d dig up anything but the truth. Reading this book for me was like a time capsule from 1992. Phillips put me right back there in the middle of an unsettling time and made me see it up close and personal. I didn’t need my telescope. I just needed to open my eyes.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
May 24, 2024
Los Angeles, 1992. The heat of the Rodney King riots might have cooled, but the city is still a tinderbox.
On a wrecked corner lot at the infamous Florence and Normandie intersection, ground is broken on a new community store. It was supposed to be the first steps towards recovery – then the body of a missing Korean shopkeeper is dug up and everything changes. As a show of good faith – and mistrusting the local cops – the Korean business association hires Black private eye Ivan Monk to investigate.
Caught between corrupt politicians, shady business owners and street gangs, can Monk solve the case and keep everything from lighting up again?
This classic PI novel, now in print in the UK for the first time and a must-read for fans of Michael Connolly and Walter Moseley, was the launchpad of Phillips career, and is the perfect place to start if you are new to his work.
On a wrecked corner lot at the infamous Florence and Normandie intersection, ground is broken on a new community store. It was supposed to be the first steps towards recovery – then the body of a missing Korean shopkeeper is dug up and everything changes. As a show of good faith – and mistrusting the local cops – the Korean business association hires Black private eye Ivan Monk to investigate.
Caught between corrupt politicians, shady business owners and street gangs, can Monk solve the case and keep everything from lighting up again?
This classic PI novel, now in print in the UK for the first time and a must-read for fans of Michael Connolly and Walter Moseley, was the launchpad of Phillips career, and is the perfect place to start if you are new to his work.
February 27, 2021
I've read several Gary Phillips books and either this or The Jook would be my favorite. Man, this is so good. A layered mystery examining the many corners of Black and Korean Los Angeles at a time immediately following the uprising over the assault on Rodney King and the death of Latasha Harlins, Monk is hired to solve a mystery where the two communities intersect. In addition to getting his man, he also has to navigate the tensions between two ethnic groups persecuted in their own ways by Los Angeles' white power structure...which may also have a hand in the crime. This is the kind of social mystery story I love when done right, along with Attica Locke's Black Water Rising. I was hooked 'til the very end and I'll have to pour through the rest of the Monk series.
April 14, 2025
“She laid her head in his lap. 'It's all so depressing. Los Angeles' capitalists trying to desperately leverage this place as the center of Pacific Rim finance and kids going hungry and people sleeping in their cars. And where I had bricks thrown at my car because black people thought I was Korean.'”
― Gary Phillips, Violent Spring
And just like that it’s Los Angeles 1992. Damn, Gary can write. Ivan Monk is classic. I don't understand how I haven't read this one. Glad I did finally.
― Gary Phillips, Violent Spring
And just like that it’s Los Angeles 1992. Damn, Gary can write. Ivan Monk is classic. I don't understand how I haven't read this one. Glad I did finally.
December 14, 2024
Set in Los Angeles, this mystery covers the year following the Rodney King riots. It is the first in a series featuring Private Investigator Ivan Monk, a black man with a Japanese girlfriend who is also a judge.
I moved to Los Angeles from Michigan at the end of 1991 and started a new job in Pasadena. I was still getting my bearings when the riots broke out in April, 1992 after the cops who beat Rodney King were exonerated by a predominately white jury. Having lived through plenty of racial violence in nearby Detroit this was nothing new to me. Having the front door and windows of my current workplace attacked and cracked was the closest such violence had come to me.
Violent Spring was an interesting read because it delves into the conflicts between Korean, Black and Hispanic interests in our city and the efforts being made to resolve such tensions as the Los Angeles government attempted to “rebuild and revitalize” downtown LA.
Violent Spring was Gary Phillips’s debut, but it reads like he was an old hand at crime fiction. I learned more about the author and in fact read the book because he was featured on the California Book Club webinar this month. (This is a wonderful series featuring California writers and I have discovered many great authors there. One can access this by putting California Book Club in your browser.)
The major cities of the world each have long and complex histories involving governments, war, commerce, art, and immigrants. They are the centers where these factors play out the dramas of Earth. Novels that deal with these cities and their histories are an excellent way to learn about and understand both the past and the present. That is why I read them!
I moved to Los Angeles from Michigan at the end of 1991 and started a new job in Pasadena. I was still getting my bearings when the riots broke out in April, 1992 after the cops who beat Rodney King were exonerated by a predominately white jury. Having lived through plenty of racial violence in nearby Detroit this was nothing new to me. Having the front door and windows of my current workplace attacked and cracked was the closest such violence had come to me.
Violent Spring was an interesting read because it delves into the conflicts between Korean, Black and Hispanic interests in our city and the efforts being made to resolve such tensions as the Los Angeles government attempted to “rebuild and revitalize” downtown LA.
Violent Spring was Gary Phillips’s debut, but it reads like he was an old hand at crime fiction. I learned more about the author and in fact read the book because he was featured on the California Book Club webinar this month. (This is a wonderful series featuring California writers and I have discovered many great authors there. One can access this by putting California Book Club in your browser.)
The major cities of the world each have long and complex histories involving governments, war, commerce, art, and immigrants. They are the centers where these factors play out the dramas of Earth. Novels that deal with these cities and their histories are an excellent way to learn about and understand both the past and the present. That is why I read them!
May 27, 2016
Very cool. Crazy L.A. Noir, complete with hunchbacks, set in South Central the year after the Uprising. I plan to read everything else this guy has written. Any crime book that mentions both the Panthers and the IWW, twice each, and keeps its politics there without losing character and plot, is going to get me pumped.
July 24, 2025
Not my favorite ending, but otherwise a great time. Pretty much everything I want out of a noir novel, just the right amount of cheese too 👍🏻 Gary Phillips I will be back for more
April 7, 2024
The first in the Ivan Monk chronicles centering around the mysterious murder of a Korean storeowner in Los Angeles during the aftermath of the 1992 uprising.
I read this book for work - I got to interview author Gary Phillips to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of the book's publishing. The interview centered on looking at the theme's discussed in the book and examining how the issues stood 30 years later.
As a native Angelena, I appreciated the author's use of real life landmarks, people, and objects that are unique to the Southland. Some characters were amalgamations real life people - it was very amusing to read the descriptions and rack my brain trying to determine who was who. Phillip's descriptions of some of the characters veered into slightly crass territory, but he's also said he would've written the book differently had he done it again.
As I turned each page I could vividly picture where the character's were as well as the time they were (Los Angeles is notorious for not preserving its history). Monk's ability to easily travel from the West Side to Silver Lake also denotes a simpler time.
Even more so I relished Phillip's artful and precise political commentary and analysis. Phillips himself is a anti-apartheid and anti-police violence activist with decades of involvement in the same areas he writes about. As such, he's able to succinctly present the reader with the realities of LA 1993, such as in this passage: “It’s all so depressing. Los Angeles’s capitalists trying to desperately leverage this place as the center of Pacific Rim finance and kids going hungry and people sleeping in their cars. And where I’ve had bricks thrown at my car because Black people thought I was Korean.”
Each of the characters is hopeful for a brighter future, some especially if it means more money to line their own pockets. As one puts it, perhaps this moment is "moksha...liberation. A release from the bondage of endless reincarnation. In this case, a release from the endless warring and cycle of self-hate and self-destruction."
The moksha has yet to arrive for the real LA - but Phillip's imagining provides a fascination rumination on the desire to create something better.
I read this book for work - I got to interview author Gary Phillips to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of the book's publishing. The interview centered on looking at the theme's discussed in the book and examining how the issues stood 30 years later.
As a native Angelena, I appreciated the author's use of real life landmarks, people, and objects that are unique to the Southland. Some characters were amalgamations real life people - it was very amusing to read the descriptions and rack my brain trying to determine who was who. Phillip's descriptions of some of the characters veered into slightly crass territory, but he's also said he would've written the book differently had he done it again.
As I turned each page I could vividly picture where the character's were as well as the time they were (Los Angeles is notorious for not preserving its history). Monk's ability to easily travel from the West Side to Silver Lake also denotes a simpler time.
Even more so I relished Phillip's artful and precise political commentary and analysis. Phillips himself is a anti-apartheid and anti-police violence activist with decades of involvement in the same areas he writes about. As such, he's able to succinctly present the reader with the realities of LA 1993, such as in this passage: “It’s all so depressing. Los Angeles’s capitalists trying to desperately leverage this place as the center of Pacific Rim finance and kids going hungry and people sleeping in their cars. And where I’ve had bricks thrown at my car because Black people thought I was Korean.”
Each of the characters is hopeful for a brighter future, some especially if it means more money to line their own pockets. As one puts it, perhaps this moment is "moksha...liberation. A release from the bondage of endless reincarnation. In this case, a release from the endless warring and cycle of self-hate and self-destruction."
The moksha has yet to arrive for the real LA - but Phillip's imagining provides a fascination rumination on the desire to create something better.
November 23, 2008
Decent debut set a couple of years after Rodney King in LA but too many characters and a bad guy that was too obvious made this a bit of a slow read.
June 16, 2024
Think of this as proto-Walter Mosley, and in fact my copy has a special introduction by Mosley. Our lead here is Ivan Monk, who has morphed into being a detective, with all the doggedness we're used to. The story grows out of the Watts riots, where the events of 20 years before still resonate, and the shattered storefronts that still remain are testimony to how little things have changed. The motivating element here is urban renewal;who gets the land, always a rare commodity in cities, and who profits the most, and what are folks willing to do to control ownership? There is love, murder, betrayal, and dishonesty, and though the villain gets it in the end, you know it's just a temporary reprieve. This was Mr. Phillips first outing, and it leaves me wanting to read more by him.
November 17, 2024
Fine start to the series. In 1992 this was blurbed by Walter Mosley back when he was still writing books set in the 50s and 60s. This is a contemporary tale in post-Rodney King LA that it took Mosley another couple of decades to reflect. I don't think Phillips has the elegance of Mosley but this book is a template for his Leonid McGill books at least. The plot is satisfyingly intricate although the big bad was telegraphed very early on. The action when it happens is clumsily described but you might only notice if you've read books that handle such physicality more deftly. Parker's Spenser books, slyly nodded to here, are a great example. I will look for another in this series to see what else he can do.
November 26, 2024
This book tackles the time right after the '92 riots happened at the height of the Black-Korean tensions throughout the city. It definitely captured those moments and it felt very Los Angeles to me. I did not live in LA during that time period but moved there in 2000 and it still felt very true to the city. I liked the noir feel to this crime story but there were a lot of characters and details to keep track of and it definitely made my attention wane a bit. I kinda had to keep turning back to catch something I missed or didn't read thoroughly.
May 18, 2025
Reread this one to check out the Deluxe Edition with added writings.
This novel is right on the shelf with the best of Chandler and Mosley for detective fiction, but it's on a shelf of its own for bringing political-economy to its narrating Los Angeles!
This novel is right on the shelf with the best of Chandler and Mosley for detective fiction, but it's on a shelf of its own for bringing political-economy to its narrating Los Angeles!
April 9, 2025
Black private in 1990s L. A. I fuck with it. It got a little convoluted at times.
November 19, 2025
A good book, I will be reading more in the series.
October 20, 2008
VIOLENT SPRING - Okay
Phillips, Gary - 2nd in Ivan Monk series
Set in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots, a novel set in Los Angeles in which a private investigator examines the murder of a Korean shop owner. Many suspect a racial motive, but it soon becomes clear to the private investigator that greed is a more likely motive.
it was okay, but that was about all. There were too many characters and it worked too hard at being politically correct.
Phillips, Gary - 2nd in Ivan Monk series
Set in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots, a novel set in Los Angeles in which a private investigator examines the murder of a Korean shop owner. Many suspect a racial motive, but it soon becomes clear to the private investigator that greed is a more likely motive.
it was okay, but that was about all. There were too many characters and it worked too hard at being politically correct.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews