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I'm sure that some of the press that will accompany the release of BANGERS will refer to it as gritty, and it's a household joke that I just hate gritty. Used to describe crime fiction, it usually means really ugly urban crime stories. Yeah, well. Gary Phillips is a terrifically talented writer, so if he's gonna write grit, I'll read it. And while this book is not an easy read, Phillips has a lot to say about a not-very-comfortable topic; the all too thin line that can separate cops from criminals. Anyone who reads newspapers has to admit that Los Angeles has some very nasty history of supporting, and allowing, some very ugly behavior, from the chief of police on down (and I include Daryl "Chokehold" Gates, to whom Phillips refers, in this indictment). Phillips here focuses on an anti-gang unit, called "TRASH" (which should tell you something, right?) in LA. The members of this unit are praised by a lot of the community because they are trying to clean up the streets and make things safer, so that every-day citizens don't risk getting shot by a drive-by every time they go out, so that crack addicts aren't lying all over the streets. But the "garbagemen", as the TRASH cops are known, and refer to themselves, contribute to the crime, the ugliness and, forgive the very John-Wayne word, lawlessness of the area. There are almost no good guys in this story; the ones there are are DA's trying to get a handle on whether the cops are over-reaching, and the story doesn't center on them so they're not around often. What is shown is a rather repulsive world where illegal behavior by cops is justified by the whining "everyone does it" defense, where the police repeatedly step over the line, participating in everything from theft and drug use to hiding their use of an apartment for on-duty sex. And sex and drugs are everywhere; one of the things that made me most uncomfortable here is the almost indifferent use of women. All women exist, in the worlds of both cops and crooks, for constant sex; that's all they are good for and all they are meant for. The women, in turn, are appalling; I'm sorry to use an overused word, but not one shows any self-respect, no matter who she is, what she does (except for those above-mentioned Das, and even then.) The most interesting cop is Cortese, who sprinkles his conversations with references to Kant, whose girlfriend is a professor (and still pretty pathetic) and who, when he meets up with two dogs named Genet and Marquez, knows what those names mean. But he's no different from Santiam, or Holton or any of the others. And none of them is much different from the gangsters, the low-life dealers, the whores and the wannabe big shots they encounter. The cops all have the smarts to do good police work, but somewhere along the line, they forgot, or stopped caring that it matters that you get a conviction without beating it out of the suspect, that it matters that you don't do coke, that it matters that you don't screw any woman who offers herself to you. I recently tried reading a well-received mystery where I didn't like any of the characters; not the protagonist, not her family members, no one. Why I had to put that book down and why I finished BANGERS, well, I wish I understood that a little better. This story is compelling and perhaps I wanted to see who "won" or who got theirs, or just wanted to understand what happened to these cops. It was a tough read, but a very worthwhile, realistic story. It left me shaking my head at the waste of talent, at the losses people incurred and at the sorry state of affairs when you can't tell the good guys, even with a score card.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, August 2003
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