Nightshade

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).