Synopsis
Thriller of the Month in The Times and the Guardian.
Book of the Week in the Daily Telegraph.
The System can save you, or it can break you . . .
On the sixth of December 1993, a drug dealer named Scrappy is shot and left for dead on her mother’s lawn in South Central Los Angeles. A heroin addict witnesses the shooting and seizes the moment to steal Scrappy’s drugs, as well as the handgun that was dropped at the scene. When he’s busted, he names two local gang members as the shooters.
There’s only one problem: one of them is guilty; the other, innocent. None of that matters, though, when the gun turns up again – miles from where the shooting happened – and both are arrested. Innocent or not, the gang tells them both to keep their mouths shut and take their charges.
With these two off the streets, Little, the unlikeliest of new gang members, is given a very serious job: discover how the gun got moved, who moved it, and why. Because it had to be a frame-up and the cops had to be involved. Hadn't they?
Played out in the streets, precincts, jails, and courtrooms of Los Angeles, The System by Ryan Gattis is a breakneck journey through every phase of the American criminal justice system. It is the story of a crime – from the moments before shots are fired, to the verdict and its violent aftershocks – told through the vivid chorus of those involved: the guilty, the innocent, the victim, the families who love them, and those simply doing their jobs. After all, justice is a matter of perspective.
Details
10 December 2020
9781509843848Reviews
Pacy, immersive and vivid, with strong characterisation and no punches pulled, this is an utterly riveting read
‘It is superb. It’s weighty, authentic to its bone marrow, questioning and thoughtful . . . I am in awe of Gattis’s plotting, characters, sense of pace and most of all his ear for language and diction and dialect . . . The System reinvigorates my idea of what fiction is capable of being.’
Gripping, meticulously-researched and smartly-plotted, I devoured this brilliant novel over the course of a weekend.
The book is the fruit of six years’ research and there are all sorts of details that ring true . . . the most compelling courtroom drama I have read this year.
