When Gary Phillips’s noir novel Violent Spring was published in 1994, it was among the first works of crime fiction to arise out of the beating of a Black man named Rodney King by Los Angeles police and the deadly riots that followed after the four officers charged in the attack were acquitted in 1992.

Over 30 years later, Phillips’s book is rightly being recognized as a landmark hard-boiled mystery for a number of reasons. As Walter Mosley writes in his introduction to the 30th-anniversary edition, it’s “a book that brings all the lost tribes of Los Angeles together in order to hide the truth. Not who killed but why they killed and how that reason is inextricably intertwined with our hungers and a kind of self-generated blindness that can never be excused.”

The seminal historical events of 1991 and 1992 have since sparked novels by a wide range of crime-fiction writers, including Michael Connelly and Steph Cha. Violent Spring focuses not on the King attack, the trial, or the riots but on their aftermath, on L.A.’s struggle to redefine itself a year later. One element of that was tectonic shifts in who held power in the city.

Phillips’s novel reveals a strong awareness of those changes. He doesn’t just center the book on a Black private eye, Ivan Monk. He peoples it with a multiracial cast who reflect the real demographics of Los Angeles. And he doesn’t play to the tropes that were prevalent at the time of publication; he doesn’t cast all those people of color as victims or low-level criminals. Some of them have achieved power in politics or business—although some will misuse it.

Another innovation is Phillips’s depiction of female characters. Earlier generations of hard-boiled mysteries were notorious for the stereotypes of women they employed: the helpless victim, the femme fatale, and little in between. Women either waited around for the male detective to save them or tried to manipulate him, mainly with sex, to save themselves from justice.

By the 1990s, not all hard-boiled detectives were male. Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton’s dogged PI, was plying her trade just down the road from Los Angeles in the fictional Santa Teresa.

But Phillips gives that a twist, creating important female characters who hold public positions of power that had long been dominated by men, mostly white ones.

And perhaps most interesting is that he does this almost casually, not with any overt fanfare for feminist advances. As part of the novel’s cool, knowing tone, he treats women’s power as something to be expected, and so does Monk. Indeed, Monk is more than ready to turn to those women when he needs help. And he’s comfortable enough with strong women to be in intimate relationships with them.

Introduced in the novel’s opening scene, a ground-breaking for a shopping center at the epicenter of the riots, is Councilwoman Tina Chalmers, “an African American woman who represented this district his mother lived in, and Monk’s old flame, [who] sat on the stage talking to an older white man in an expensive-looking gray and black-flecked double-breasted suit.”

The man is Maxfield O’Day, “a Los Angeles mover and shaker of the first order” who reminds Monk of “a cross between a Cadillac dealer and a coffin salesman.”

In an earlier era, every mover and shaker in the city would have looked like O’Day, but Phillips puts him onstage with other emerging power brokers from across L.A.’s demographics: “Korean, Black and Latino representatives of the business and grassroots elements of our community,” as Chalmers says in her speech. She’s the person speaking for them all at this event—not only a person of color but a woman.

Immediately after her inspirational speech, construction equipment unearths a body buried on the building site. It will turn out to be a murder victim—a Korean liquor-store owner who’s been missing since the riots.

The Korean Merchants Association, eager to see the crime solved quickly and not entirely sure it can rely on the cops, hires Monk to investigate. The connection is Monk’s current romantic partner, Superior Court judge Jill Kodama.

Kodama is Japanese American and as deeply conscious of racial inequality as Monk is. As they’re parsing out why he was hired to look into the murder, he teases her, “You’re the one who sits on the bench, keeping the snarling dogs of Aryan fury from being unleashed on us poor citizens.”

It might just be because he’s a Black man and she’s Asian American. “Jill and I realize the only reason they want to hire me is to make themselves look good,” Monk tells a friend.

Later, a man Monk questions in connection with the murder is found murdered as well, and Monk is arrested for that crime. He’s happy to lean into Kodama’s power—not only is she his alibi but she also acts as his lawyer and, as a judge, orders him released, even though she’s pushing the ethical envelope to do so.

As one of the cops tells Monk, “solid chick to have around, bro.”•

Join us on November 21 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Phillips will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest Naomi Hirahara to discuss Violent Spring. Register for the Zoom conversation here.