United States
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One-Shot Harry
Race and civil rights in 1963 Los Angeles provide a powerful backdrop in Gary Phillips's riveting historical crime novel about an African American forensic photographer seeking justice for a friend-perfect for fans of Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, and George Pelecanos.
LOS ANGELES, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King's Freedom Rally, Ingram risks becoming a victim at every crime scene he photographs.
When Ingram hears about a deadly automobile accident on his police scanner, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, a white jazz trumpeter. The LAPD declares the car crash an accident, but when Ingram develops his photos, he sees signs of foul play. Ingram feels compelled to play detective, even if it means putting his own life on the line. Armed with his wits, his camera, and occasionally his Colt .45, "One-Shot" Harry plunges headfirst into the seamy underbelly of LA society, tangling with racists, leftists, gangsters, zealots, and lovers, all in the hope of finding something resembling justice for a friend.
Master storyteller and crime fiction legend Gary Phillips has filled the pages of One-Shot Harry with fascinating historical cameos, wise-cracks, tenderness, and an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride of a plot with consequences far beyond one dead body.
LOS ANGELES, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King's Freedom Rally, Ingram risks becoming a victim at every crime scene he photographs.
When Ingram hears about a deadly automobile accident on his police scanner, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, a white jazz trumpeter. The LAPD declares the car crash an accident, but when Ingram develops his photos, he sees signs of foul play. Ingram feels compelled to play detective, even if it means putting his own life on the line. Armed with his wits, his camera, and occasionally his Colt .45, "One-Shot" Harry plunges headfirst into the seamy underbelly of LA society, tangling with racists, leftists, gangsters, zealots, and lovers, all in the hope of finding something resembling justice for a friend.
Master storyteller and crime fiction legend Gary Phillips has filled the pages of One-Shot Harry with fascinating historical cameos, wise-cracks, tenderness, and an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride of a plot with consequences far beyond one dead body.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for One-Shot Harry
CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of 2022
She Reads Most Anticipated Mystery Novels of 2022
A Library Journal Editor's Pick for Spring 2022
"For thirty years Phillips has been a must-read writer, and One-Shot Harry is probably his best ever-tense and suspenseful, of course, but also deep, resonant and intelligent. It's a story that needed to be told, and therefore a book that needs to be read."
-Lee Child
"Few books are able to capture the essence and vibe of classic hardboiled fiction and still manage to make the prose feel modern and of-the-moment. Gary Phillips does just that with One-Shot Harry and the memorable titular protagonist, Harry Ingram. This book is a swift uppercut of gritty storytelling that will keep you hungrily turning the pages, loaded with moments that will linger in your mind long after you've finished reading."
-Alex Segura, author of Secret Identity, Blackout, and Miami Midnight
"Phillips' vision of Los Angeles in 1963 comes to vivid life in the form of Harry Ingram, a news photographer and part-time process server who's putting himself in the firing line all day long as the city's racial and social divides pull further and further apart. When an old Army friend of his is killed in a car accident, Ingram takes his crime scene photos and his wits on a journey through a deeply corrupt city, looking for the final answers for one man's death."
-CrimeReads
"Phillips vividly captures the sights and sounds of the era (jazz and blues on Central Avenue) as well as the ubiquitous racism and police brutality that threatened everyone in the Black community. Ingram emerges as a particularly satisfying, no-nonsense hero."
-Booklist, Starred Review
"Terrific . . . With close attention to period detail and precise prose, Phillips brings the era vividly to life. Crime fiction fans won't want to miss this one."
-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Phillips roots his hero's adventures in a densely woven web of real-life local history that emphasizes both Black Angelenos' historic oppression and the moment for resistance crystallized in the Freedom Rally King plans en route to the demonstration in D.C. whose approach signals the possibility of historic change for both haves and have-nots. Like Walter Mosley in his stories about Easy Rawlins, Phillips presents a powerfully history-driven mystery."
-Kirkus, Starred Review
Praise for Gary Phillips
"Gary Phillips is my kind of crime writer."
-Sara Paretsky, New York Times bestselling author
"In the tradition of Dashiell Ha...
CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of 2022
She Reads Most Anticipated Mystery Novels of 2022
A Library Journal Editor's Pick for Spring 2022
"For thirty years Phillips has been a must-read writer, and One-Shot Harry is probably his best ever-tense and suspenseful, of course, but also deep, resonant and intelligent. It's a story that needed to be told, and therefore a book that needs to be read."
-Lee Child
"Few books are able to capture the essence and vibe of classic hardboiled fiction and still manage to make the prose feel modern and of-the-moment. Gary Phillips does just that with One-Shot Harry and the memorable titular protagonist, Harry Ingram. This book is a swift uppercut of gritty storytelling that will keep you hungrily turning the pages, loaded with moments that will linger in your mind long after you've finished reading."
-Alex Segura, author of Secret Identity, Blackout, and Miami Midnight
"Phillips' vision of Los Angeles in 1963 comes to vivid life in the form of Harry Ingram, a news photographer and part-time process server who's putting himself in the firing line all day long as the city's racial and social divides pull further and further apart. When an old Army friend of his is killed in a car accident, Ingram takes his crime scene photos and his wits on a journey through a deeply corrupt city, looking for the final answers for one man's death."
-CrimeReads
"Phillips vividly captures the sights and sounds of the era (jazz and blues on Central Avenue) as well as the ubiquitous racism and police brutality that threatened everyone in the Black community. Ingram emerges as a particularly satisfying, no-nonsense hero."
-Booklist, Starred Review
"Terrific . . . With close attention to period detail and precise prose, Phillips brings the era vividly to life. Crime fiction fans won't want to miss this one."
-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Phillips roots his hero's adventures in a densely woven web of real-life local history that emphasizes both Black Angelenos' historic oppression and the moment for resistance crystallized in the Freedom Rally King plans en route to the demonstration in D.C. whose approach signals the possibility of historic change for both haves and have-nots. Like Walter Mosley in his stories about Easy Rawlins, Phillips presents a powerfully history-driven mystery."
-Kirkus, Starred Review
Praise for Gary Phillips
"Gary Phillips is my kind of crime writer."
-Sara Paretsky, New York Times bestselling author
"In the tradition of Dashiell Ha...
Short Excerpt Teaser
CHAPTER ONE
"Fifteen." Josh Nakano placed his domino tile on the table with the others.
The raspy voice of comedian Redd Foxx, known for his blue material, issued from an LP spinning on the record player. "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here we are again for the great racing of the T-bone stakes." An audience tittered in the background of the live recording. The album was titled The New Race Track.
"Don't stop writing yet, scorekeeper." Peter "Strummer" Edwards smiled, slapping down a tile. "Ten." He was a tall, dark-skinned man with large hands, several of his knuckles misshaped like a seasoned boxer's.
James "Shoals" Pettigrew marked the points on a lined yellow notepad, then put down his own domino. The hardware store owner didn't score.
Using one hand, Harry Ingram picked up his facedown tiles, turning them toward his face, studying them. Between two fingers of his other hand, a cheap cigar smoldered.
"If you blink three times, they still ain't gonna change," Pettigrew joked.
"Got it, Captain Hook." Ingram put down his choice, hoping this time to block Nakano from scoring again.
"Thanks for nothing," Nakano said, playing after Ingram. He was a medium-built man with thick black hair going gray at the sides. He wore glasses and a colorful Hawaiian shirt over casual slacks. He favored loud sport shirts when not relegated to suit and tie, as befitted a funeral director.
"Always at your service, good sir."
When the LP ended, Ingram got up from the card table and went over to his record player, which was set below several built-in bookshelves. Among the books on the shelves were two police scanners and an AM/FM transistor radio. Ingram put the record back in its sleeve, the photographic image on the front a smiling young woman in modified jockey gear straddling a hobby horse.
"Put on the radio, would you, Harry?" Edwards said, yawning and stretching. "Can't have Redd making me too excited before I go to bed alone."
Pettigrew wiggled his fingers. "Alone, you say?"
Everyone chuckled.
Ingram slotted the Foxx album alphabetically among other comedic, jazz and blues albums he kept in wooden produce crates stacked in a corner. He turned the radio on, adjusting the antenna and turning the dial to bring the station in clearer.
". . . and the hunt goes on for the bank robber dubbed the Morning Bandit. But now, my dear listeners," the DJ continued, "we here at KGFJ urge all right-thinking Angelenos to come out and hear what Martin Luther King has to say when he arrives in town less than three weeks from today. As many of us know, his message isn't just for the South, but for what goes on here in the supposedly enlightened north."
"You covered the reverend when he was in town before, didn't you?" Nakano said to Ingram as he sat down again. King had last been in Los Angeles two years earlier to speak at the Sports Arena. The facility had been filled to capacity with thousands standing outside to hear him over the loudspeakers.
"Yeah, I've got a request in through the Sentinel to take shots when he speaks this time too. But they'd already got this reporter assigned who takes his own pics." Ingram made part of his living as a photographer for the Black press.
"What about the march later this year?" Edwards said. In the 1950s he'd been the one to look after the interests of gangster Jack Dragna on the Black side of Los Angeles. These days he had his own interests to see to-some aboveboard and others he didn't file taxes about.
"You going?" Ingram asked.
"Thinking about it." Edwards looked up from his dominoes at the other three staring at him. "What? All sorts of people are going, including Moses." He meant Charlton Heston, who was heading the Hollywood contingent to the March on Washington taking place in August.
"You know this is the second time this has been tried," Nakano said.
"Huh?" Edwards lit a cigarette and opened another can of Hamm's he'd retrieved from Ingram's refrigerator.
"A. Philip Randolph threatened a march back in the forties unless Roosevelt desegregated the armed forces and paid the same wages to Blacks working in the war industries. FDR didn't desegregate but did sign a bill a...
"Fifteen." Josh Nakano placed his domino tile on the table with the others.
The raspy voice of comedian Redd Foxx, known for his blue material, issued from an LP spinning on the record player. "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here we are again for the great racing of the T-bone stakes." An audience tittered in the background of the live recording. The album was titled The New Race Track.
"Don't stop writing yet, scorekeeper." Peter "Strummer" Edwards smiled, slapping down a tile. "Ten." He was a tall, dark-skinned man with large hands, several of his knuckles misshaped like a seasoned boxer's.
James "Shoals" Pettigrew marked the points on a lined yellow notepad, then put down his own domino. The hardware store owner didn't score.
Using one hand, Harry Ingram picked up his facedown tiles, turning them toward his face, studying them. Between two fingers of his other hand, a cheap cigar smoldered.
"If you blink three times, they still ain't gonna change," Pettigrew joked.
"Got it, Captain Hook." Ingram put down his choice, hoping this time to block Nakano from scoring again.
"Thanks for nothing," Nakano said, playing after Ingram. He was a medium-built man with thick black hair going gray at the sides. He wore glasses and a colorful Hawaiian shirt over casual slacks. He favored loud sport shirts when not relegated to suit and tie, as befitted a funeral director.
"Always at your service, good sir."
When the LP ended, Ingram got up from the card table and went over to his record player, which was set below several built-in bookshelves. Among the books on the shelves were two police scanners and an AM/FM transistor radio. Ingram put the record back in its sleeve, the photographic image on the front a smiling young woman in modified jockey gear straddling a hobby horse.
"Put on the radio, would you, Harry?" Edwards said, yawning and stretching. "Can't have Redd making me too excited before I go to bed alone."
Pettigrew wiggled his fingers. "Alone, you say?"
Everyone chuckled.
Ingram slotted the Foxx album alphabetically among other comedic, jazz and blues albums he kept in wooden produce crates stacked in a corner. He turned the radio on, adjusting the antenna and turning the dial to bring the station in clearer.
". . . and the hunt goes on for the bank robber dubbed the Morning Bandit. But now, my dear listeners," the DJ continued, "we here at KGFJ urge all right-thinking Angelenos to come out and hear what Martin Luther King has to say when he arrives in town less than three weeks from today. As many of us know, his message isn't just for the South, but for what goes on here in the supposedly enlightened north."
"You covered the reverend when he was in town before, didn't you?" Nakano said to Ingram as he sat down again. King had last been in Los Angeles two years earlier to speak at the Sports Arena. The facility had been filled to capacity with thousands standing outside to hear him over the loudspeakers.
"Yeah, I've got a request in through the Sentinel to take shots when he speaks this time too. But they'd already got this reporter assigned who takes his own pics." Ingram made part of his living as a photographer for the Black press.
"What about the march later this year?" Edwards said. In the 1950s he'd been the one to look after the interests of gangster Jack Dragna on the Black side of Los Angeles. These days he had his own interests to see to-some aboveboard and others he didn't file taxes about.
"You going?" Ingram asked.
"Thinking about it." Edwards looked up from his dominoes at the other three staring at him. "What? All sorts of people are going, including Moses." He meant Charlton Heston, who was heading the Hollywood contingent to the March on Washington taking place in August.
"You know this is the second time this has been tried," Nakano said.
"Huh?" Edwards lit a cigarette and opened another can of Hamm's he'd retrieved from Ingram's refrigerator.
"A. Philip Randolph threatened a march back in the forties unless Roosevelt desegregated the armed forces and paid the same wages to Blacks working in the war industries. FDR didn't desegregate but did sign a bill a...
