47 pages • 1-hour read
Nightshade
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, animal death, and cursing.
Structural Inequality in the Criminal Justice System
Like many of Michael Connelly’s novels, Nightshade suggests that there are serious structural issues in America’s criminal justice system. The novel’s protagonist, Detective Stilwell, believes that the system is “not yet broken but getting close to it” (50). Despite his best efforts to enforce the law and prosecute injustices, he feels that “there [i]s never complete justice” (305), especially on Catalina Island. The island’s position as a small, isolated station in a large police system, most of whose officers come from elsewhere, causes structural issues that complicate the pursuit of justice.
Although Stilwell is the commander in chief of the Catalina police, he is still forced to answer to Monika Juarez, the Los Angeles County district attorney, who Stilwell knows will “reject most of the cases” (50). Because the Los Angeles county jail system is “already crowded and under federal oversight,” Juarez is forced to “weed out the inconsequential cases” from Catalina that she feels are “not worth the time and money to adjudicate” on the mainland (50). The result of this is that many crimes committed on the island are never prosecuted. Even when the mainland office does decide to prosecute Catalina crimes, Stilwell feels that they move too slowly, noting that “Catalina [i]s not high on any mainlander’s to-do list” (54). The physical distance between Stilwell and the mainland prosecutors creates a disparity in attention that represents a form of structural inequality in the criminal justice system.
Structural issues also exist within the Catalina Island Police Department, which is comprised primarily of mainland officers who have been temporarily stationed on the island. The novel’s opening chapter features Stilwell (a recent transplant himself) taking advantage of the system to get free labor from locals accused of crimes. Stilwell arrests a “born and raised” Catalina local named Kermit Henderson for “burglary of an occupied dwelling with a firearm enhancement” (5). After Stilwell is told that Henderson works in maintenance at a local golf course, he convinces Judge Harrell to use his judicial discretion to sentence Henderson to three months’ community service so that the police station can “get some maintenance done” (6). Stilwell is eager to process the arrest because the community service term of another local, Sean Quinlan, is about to end, leaving the station without free maintenance labor. The fact that Stilwell, presented elsewhere in the novel as a model of justice, is willing to exploit judicial discretion in order to obtain free labor suggests that there are serious structural issues in the criminal justice system.
The Impact of Tourism on Communities
Although Detective Stilwell does not interact with tourists during his investigation, the impact of the tourism industry on Catalina Island is felt throughout the novel. Although “shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hoteliers [a]re pleased, Mayor Allen [i]s happy, and all [i]s well” on days when Catalina was “busy and full” (43), Stilwell knows that tourists’ bad behavior will have him “running [his] ass off with drunk-and-disorderlies” (15). Ultimately, the novel suggests that long-term dependence on tourism can have a negative effect on communities, resulting in an unhealthy obsession with reputation, violent greed, and the risk of exploitation.
The behavior of Avalon mayor Doug Allen, who was “born and raised” on Catalina (27), suggests that dependence on tourism has caused him to prioritize the island’s reputation above justice and even above the safety of island residents. When the body of Leigh-Anne Moss is found floating in the Avalon harbor, Allen’s first worry is that the news will “negatively affect the reputation of this beautiful island” (27), causing a dip in tourism. Desperate to avoid drawing attention to violence on the island, he urges Stilwell to rush through the investigation, claiming that “[he] do[es]n’t want that thing bobbing up on the surface in front of the Express” (26). In this passage, the reference to the Express, the ferry that brings tourists over from the mainland, suggests that Allen is more concerned with the island’s reputation with tourists than with justice for Moss, whose body he refers to callously as a “thing” (221). Allen’s obsession with the island’s reputation is directly related to the island’s dependence on tourism.
The novel also suggests that greed for tourist money can cause people to turn violent. In his desperation to secure a larger part of the tourist market, Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova resorted to “slashing tires on the competitors’ carts to outright stealing them and dumping them off cliffs on the back side of the island” (221). Later, he ordered Henry Gaston to mutilate a federally protected buffalo “so it would make news and would get blamed on aliens” (221), bringing attention to his alien mystery tours. In both of these episodes, Terranova’s violent greed was aimed at the expansive tourist economy on which the island relies.
Finally, the novel suggests that dependence on a tourist economy can lead towns like Avalon to be exploited. During his investigation, Stilwell discovers that Marcus Rifkin, the president of company proposing a controversial new Ferris wheel in Avalon, has a history of exploiting towns that “depend[] heavily on tourism” (219). He learns that, across the country, most of Rifkin’s projects are stuck “in the designing stages,” and “none ha[ve] become operational yet” (219), suggesting that he is scamming the governments of these towns. Mayor Allen’s eagerness to sign onto this possibly exploitative project reflects a negative side of the town’s dependence on the tourist economy.
The Dangers of Ingroup Biases
The tension between mainland Californians and Catalina Island locals is an important thread throughout Nightshade, reflecting the novel’s interest in the dangers of ingroup biases. “Ingroup bias” is the term used to describe the tendency to favor individuals within a group and exclude and denigrate those outside the group. Ingroup bonds are typically built on shared characteristics, such as place of origin, social class, or religion. The dangers of these types of biases are demonstrated most clearly in the tense relationship between the locals and the transplants that form the police force, but similar patterns of behavior can be seen in the exclusive nature of the Black Marlin Club, whose members are all transplants but form their own ingroup based on wealth and social status.
The novel’s opening chapters reveal that the Catalina Island Police Department is comprised primarily of officers who have been transferred from the mainland, usually as punishment. Although Stilwell vows to make Catalina his home, most officers leave Catalina “as soon as they [a]re rehabilitated in the eyes of the mainland command staff” (17). The result of this transient police force is a sense that “it [i]s not worth the residents’ investment of time to get to know any of its personnel” (17). This attitude extends all the way to Mayor Allen, who believes that he is “firm and permanent” on the island (334), while transplants like Stilwell are “carpetbaggers who serve[] at [locals’] pleasure and convenience” (334). Ingroup biases cause locals to distrust outsiders, including outsiders in the police force, resulting in increased crime on the island.
The exclusive nature of the Black Marlin Club also reflects the dangers of ingroup biases, as club members present themselves as superior to the outgroup of nonmembers. The novel’s introduction to the club’s “invite-only membership of moneyed families from the mainland” stresses the two shared characteristics that make the members unique on Catalina (55): their wealth and their status as outsiders. Ingroup thinking enables the Black Marlin Club Members to rally around these traits as central facets of their identity and to exclude individuals who don’t share them, such as club manager Charles Crane. Although Crane acts as if he is “entitled” to the prestige and respect granted to the club, members treat him like “a glorified servant” (288). Crane’s access to the club does not negate the fact that he is not wealthy and is a local and therefore does not meet the criteria necessary for belonging to the ingroup. The novel’s suggestion that club members “don’t like outsiders acting like they belong” is especially ironic given the fact that the members are themselves outsiders on Catalina (289).
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