Perdition, U.S.A.

Black private investigator Ivan Monk’s search for a connection between three murdered Black men in Los Angeles leads him into a dangerous investigation that uncovers a white supremacist conspiracy stretching across the West Coast.

This novel is part of the mystery series that launched Gary Phillips’s career.

Robert “Scatterboy” Williams is a small-time hustler selling counterfeit Cartier watches in Pacific Shores, a port city south of Los Angeles. When he is gunned down in broad daylight, his death appears to be another routine act of street violence. Soon afterward, drug dealer Ronny Aaron is shot and killed outside a liquor store. Then college student Jimmy Henderson is left comatose after being struck by two bullets.

At first glance, the three victims seem to have nothing in common except the neighborhood where they were attacked and the color of their skin.

Law enforcement dismisses Scatterboy’s murder as business as usual, but his girlfriend is unwilling to let the case be forgotten. She hires Ivan Monk to investigate. What begins as an inquiry into three seemingly unrelated shootings soon places Monk on a twisting and dangerous path that reveals a far larger and more sinister agenda: the rise of an extremist demagogue and a conspiracy fueled by racial hatred.