ONE-SHOT HARRY

The death of an old friend sucks a Black photographer into a maelstrom of intrigue in the lead-up to Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington.

As he freely admits, Harry Ingram is “just trying to make the rent.” In addition to a couple of activities best left unmentioned, he’s a process server and a sometime photographer for publications like Jet and the California Eagle. When White horn player Ben Kinslow, who served with Harry in Korea, is killed in a suspicious car crash, Harry immediately suspects that his death is linked to the activities of Kinslow’s wealthy boss, Winston Hoyt. But suspecting isn’t knowing, and knowing isn’t proving it to the satisfaction of the LAPD, whose chief, William Parker, advertises job opportunities in the Deep South in order to attract good old boys who can keep the Black man in his place. In the course of his investigations, Harry is threatened and beaten and his camera smashed by thugs hired to keep their bosses’ names out of the papers and by police officers sworn to protect and to serve. Along the way, he hooks up with Anita Claire, a math teacher working on Tom Bradley’s mayoral campaign who’s hiding secrets of her own. 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.