All Involved Paperback - 2016

From the rear cover

A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast's Richard Price--a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty

At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King, and the city exploded in violence. Fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: murders that occurred outside active rioting sites, including some committed by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.

A gritty and cinematic work of fiction, All Involved vividly re-creates this turbulent and terrifying time through seventeen interconnected first-person narratives. Focusing on a sliver of Los Angeles almost completely ignored by the media during the riots, Ryan Gattis paints a portrait of modern America itself--laying bare our history, our prejudices, and our complexities. Resonant with the voices of gang members, firefighters, graffiti kids, and nurses caught up in these extraordinary circumstances, All Involved is a literary tour de force.

"A symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel....It swallowed me whole."--David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

"A heartbreaking portrait of a city tearing itself apart."--Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

"Corrosive, timely, vividly realized scenes of urban warfare and thwarted dreams by a writer who clearly knows his subject."--Joyce Carol Oates

"A monumental achievement." --Dennis Lehane

Media reviews

Citations

• New York Times Book Review, 01/31/2016, Page 24