Book review: The System, by Ryan Gattis

The early chapters may be hard going at times, by Ryan Gattis’s multi-voiced crime thriller soon builds up an irresistible momentum, writes Allan Massie

Ryan Gattis PIC: Sam Tenney

Set in Los Angeles in 1993, The System is a crime novel and a novel of social criticism. Its subject is the American justice system, its attempt at fairness and its frequent failures, perversions and brutality. It begins on the streets with the shooting of a woman drug dealer; she survives to testify at the trial which occupies the last third of the book. Two young men are identified by a witness, one a known criminal nicknamed Wizard – because “he makes thinks disappear” – and a younger boy called Dreamer who is currently the boyfriend of Wizard’s respectable and law-abiding cousin Angela. The witness, Augie, is himself an addict in search of a fix.

The novel is many-voiced, each chapter spoken by a different character. Besides the three named these include some of their friends, a parole officer, policemen, prison warders, and lawyers. Not all the voices make for easy reading, at least for us this side of the Atlantic. Indeed the first two voices, Dreamer’s and Augie’s, might tempt you to lay the book aside. This would be a mistake. The deeper you go into the novel, the more compelling it becomes. There is a glossary at the back of the book. It runs to 12 pages. The publishers might have been wiser to have placed it at the front. Readers may be well into the novel before they discover it.

The book can be read as an indictment drawn up against The System. Brutality and corruption are frequent. The two young men brought to trial for the shooting are identified by dubious testimony and evidence planted by an officer of the law. Once within the system, under arrest, awaiting trial, they are treated harshly, even brutally, and degraded. At the same time there is a hierarchy even among prisoners on remand, and those at the top are senior criminals. One would say that the author, Ryan Gattis, is a Liberal horrified by much of The System, but he is not a “bleeding heart Liberal.” He doesn’t pretend that many caught up in the system are other than horrible, violent men. Likewise, the fact that some officers of the law are corrupt doesn’t mean that all the police and courts are. In fact, Gattis lays great emphasis on the checks which require lawyers to be scrupulous in their observance of protocol. The novel is all the stronger for the author’s own careful balance.

If some of the investigation and search for evidence undertaken by the friends of the two accused is not always easy to follow, at least without frequent recourse to the glossary, the trial scenes which occupy the last third of the novel are excellent, lucid, intelligent and utterly gripping. If Dreamer, the younger of the two accused, is in a sense the novel’s hero, at least inasmuch as we are invited to care for him and likely to accept that invitation, the other hero is his advocate, a young Asian who switched from the role of prosecutor seven years ago in order to become a public defender – someone, that is, whose fee is paid by the state. Intelligent, diligent and perceptive, he is a defence advocate in the Perry Mason class.

This is a novel I began to read with misgivings, and indeed found the early chapters hard going. But it became compelling and the second half is very good indeed. One should add that this is possible only because the groundwork had been well laid by intelligent and cunning plotting. It is also, I should say, a fair novel. Gattis recognizes that The System is under enormous, near intolerable, strain, not least because of America’s drug laws and the demand for drugs which promotes criminality, just as Prohibition (of alcohol) did in the 1920s and 30s. The wonder is not that so much goes wrong and The System so often breaks down and is brutal and corrupt, but that, despite everything justice is sometimes done. The System is a crime novel and a thriller, but, like the best in the genre, is invites you to think as well as feel.

The System, by Ryan Gattis, Picador, 438pp, £16.99

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive. We are now more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription to support our journalism.

To subscribe to scotsman.com and enjoy unlimited access to Scottish news and information online and on our app, visit https://www.scotsman.com/subscriptions

Joy Yates, Editorial Director