The System

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 local gang members Wizard and Dreamer 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 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.

About the Author :
Ryan Gattis is the author of Safe, Kung Fu High School, and All Involved, which won the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Lire Award for Noir of the Year in France. He lives and writes in South Los Angeles, where he is a member of art collective UGLARworks, a founding board member of arts non-profit Heritage Future, and a PEN America Prison Writing Mentor.

Review :
The System took me back, powerfully, to my incarceration in the early 90s. Wow. I relate so much to this book, it’s painful. I could swear I did time with one of these characters in County. That’s how real this novel is. I had to keep reminding myself it was fiction. Front to back, it’s not just an incredible work, it’s an experience. Especially for those with no idea what it’s like to be inside. The System is a tour de force that shatters all the usual categories: It is a page-turner, but one you will want to read slowly in order to savor every gorgeous sentence. It’s got bad guys and good guys, but you’re never quite sure who belongs in which category. And if a novel is magical when you feel like you know the characters intimately, and like them, despite the fact they are mostly people you would ordinarily cross the street to avoid, then Ryan Gattis is a magician. Praise for Ryan Gattis' last book - Safe: A thrilling heist novel with a big beating heart SAFE is a propulsive thriller that confirms Ryan Gattis as one of our most gifted novelists. The book has unstoppable momentum yet is as finely layered and detailed with the gritty truth of life and the streets as I’ve ever read. It shoots you down a path that is fraught with surprise and insight, and you can’t ask for more than that. Tenderness in the midst of stories of brutality, Safe is the perfect read to have in your suitcase Inherently compelling. This macho, faster-than-a-speeding-bullet novel benefits from the extensive research Gattis has done on the L.A. gang scene and that deep knowledge informs electrifying plot twists. A literary novel and a thriller with more twists than a DVD box-set make quite a combination. There is a lathed quality to Ryan Gattis’s prose, which is reminiscent of Raymond Carver or Ernest Hemingway. Gattis is superb with the staccato sentence, honed to a few words. I have previously been enthusiastic about Gattis’s polyphonic All Involved; this duet shows he is as assured on a closer frame. No ordinary gangster cat-and-mouse chase . . . While the gangsters-with-a-heart story might sound improbable, Gattis compensates with whip-smart vernacular and a narrative that zips along. Gattis has created a gripping novel about opportunity, transformation and hope. Praise for All Involved: 'A symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel. It is visceral and adrenalin-fuelled, yet tender and even darkly comic. It is audacious, unflinching and subversive. It doesn't judge. It swallowed me whole.'