There was a black and white Japanese cartoon show I used to watch as a kid called The Amazing Three. These were three talking animals that were actually space aliens sent to see if Earth was going to be a problem to their planet and other worlds, and if so, be destroyed. For reasons that I can’t figure out why, even now, the three aliens, officers in fact, who can alter their appearance with their, you know, alien science, chose to appear as a duck, rabbit and horse. They drove around—the rabbit must have driven—in a giant tire-shaped vehicle called, yep, the Big Wheel. I remembered none of this. I had to look this up on Wikipedia.
Author Archives: Gary Phillips
Posted inOpinion-OW
Crime and the City
I love crime. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no ski-mask-wearing hoodlum crouching in the shadows of that alcove you’re passing, salivating to pounce and snatch your hard earned money. I like my crime on the page where it can be dissected and examined; hunting like a neural scientist with their electron microscope for the impulses that drove a person to do that crazy thing they did. That’s one of the reasons it wasn’t a stretch for me to utilize experiences gained as community activist to campaign in penning crime and mystery fiction. For real, life is ripe with material for hard-boiled stories. Certainly one of the richest loams for excavating these gems of corruption, double-dealing, bribery and more is Los Angeles and the Southern California region.
