Gary Phillips has published novels, comics, and short stories, and edited numerous anthologies, including Orange County Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994, was named one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. Culprits, a linked anthology he coedited, has been optioned as a British miniseries, and he was a staff writer on FX's Snowfall about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central, where he grew up.