About the author.Gary Phillips draws on his experiences ranging from community activist, teaching incarcerated youth, state director of a political action committee to delivering dog cages in writing his tales of chicanery and malfeasance. He is the author of more than twenty mystery and graphic novels including the Ivan Monk and Martha Chainey series, and his short stories have been featured in various anthologies including Los Angeles Noir, Between the Dark and the Daylight and The Heroin Chronicles. He was also the editor of the bestselling anthology, Orange County Noir.Philips’ 2010 novel The Underbelly about a sometimes homeless Vietnam vet’s search for a disabled friend who has disappeared from L.A.’s Skid Row, was named one of the best mysteries of the year by The Rap Sheet. His current novel is Warlord of Willow Ridge which Booklist noted, “Phillips is a veteran crime novelist who creates a plausible post-apocalyptic scenario in which the safety of middle-class America can dissolve in a moment. Exciting, violent, and entertaining.” He has also written essays for the Robert B. Parker tribute book, In Pursuit of Spenser and for The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre.
His novels The Perpetrators and Violent Spring were previously optioned for film as was his graphic novel Midnight Mover. Phillips has won the Chester Himes and the Brody awards for his fiction.