All involved

Gritty and violent, but realistically well written.

Easy five stars for this modern crime classic. Set on the fringes of the 1992 LA riots, it's the story of Latino gangs using the city meltdown and the desperate overstretching of enforcement agencies to settle their own scores. It's told as a series of vignettes over six days, each focusing on a particular character. These characters then appear in each other's stories, giving rise to a polyphonic evocation of just how utterly messed up gang culture is. This is thrilling, visceral, graphic stuff, a sledgehammer of a book that kept me turning the pages quicker and quicker.