It’s always exciting when a new title is coming from LA icon Gary Phillips. It’s even more exciting when the book is coming from our friends and collaborators at Writ Large Projects. Three Bullet Opera, a new Jackie Alvarez adventure, is a wild, dark, action packed and out there book is coming later this year and it’s bringing a special someone back with it: the legendary villain Dr. Mabuse!
Former Army investigator and ex-L.A. Sheriff’s deputy Jackie Alvarez is asked by her old friend, the hood’s patron saint Sister Rosa Vu, to look into a killing in Koreatown involving one of Vu’s wayward flock. Soon Jackie is battling ninjas armed with electric samurai swords and dodging drones seeking to blow her up from the sky. She uncovers a secret lair under a seemingly normal apartment building and more, the mastermind behind all this—a supreme international villain believed long dead…Dr. Mabuse! Mabuse who can astral project his essence into others, hypnotize by remote control, now seeks to control Los Angeles, then the state, by his old methods and a new one—taking over machines with his mind. Only Jackie Alvarez, armed with her wits and indomitable will, can stop his nefarious scheme before the aria of the Three Bullet Opera is sung for her.
Dr. Mabuse is a character that was created by Norbert Jacques over a hundred years ago in Germany. The character was most famously revisited by the great German director Fritz Lang in three films in the 30s. From Wikipedia:
Much of the Mabuse works are comments by Jacques on German society, in some case, the political excesses of the 1930s.
If you haven’t discovered Gary Phillips’ writing yet, such as Ash Dark As Night, One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, you may have come across some of his television work. He was the Senior Story Editor for the cult classic Snowfall on FX, a show about the rise of the crack epidemic and the CIA in South Central LA in the 80s.
As Lee Child, best-selling author of the Jack Reacher novels, says: “For thirty years Phillips has been a must-read writer.”
Pre-order your copy today. Link below.