One of Those Places
The novel opens at a restaurant with the strangely consonant-lacking name Water Gril. That lack of the second “l” indicates it is one of those types of restaurants. You know, the kind only rich people think has food worth eating. This is immediately confirmed by the imagery of the interior atmosphere:
“The Water Gril was a nice place for a downtown lunch. Good food and atmosphere, good separation between tables for private conversation, and a wine list hard to top in al of downtown. It was the kind of place where you kept your suit jacket on and the waiter put a black napkin across your lap so you needn't be bothered with doing it yourself.”
Of Manson and Paneling
Know this much to be true: the judicial system in America—and probably everywhere else—is mostly theatre. Sure, justice does occasionally prevail based entirely on the facts and nothing more, but the outcome either way is more due to plain simple theatrics than facts. The imagery here underscores the vital length between fact and fiction:
“The DA's Office...press conference room...had not been updated since the days they'd used it to hold briefings on the Charles Manson case. Its faded wood-paneled walls and drooping flags in the corner had been the backdrop of a thousand press briefings and they gave all proceedings there a threadbare appearance that belied the true power and might of the office. The state prosecutor was never the underdog...yet it appeared that the office did not have the money for even a fresh coat of paint.”
Pop Culturing
Some writers still cling to the pre-Stephen King idea that a work of fiction which includes pop culture references is a ticking time bomb waiting for an explosion of irrelevancy. In other words: characters discuss movies and TV in general, but avoid specific titles of actual productions. The other school of thought is that referencing pop culture touchstones institutes a layer of imagery that serves the purpose of intensifying realism. Take a guess where the author of this book comes down on the issue:
“Jessup rounded out the afternoon by watching a movie called Shutter Island at the Chinese theater in Hollywood.”
"`You want to watch Lost?’ They had been slowly going through the DVDs of the television show, catching up on five years' worth of episodes. The show was about several people who survived a plane crash on an uncharted island in the South Pacific.”
"Listen, Clive, I'm an attorney and innocent until proven guilty is a measure you apply in court, not on Larry King Live.”
The Context
The details of the case in question revolves around whether or not a garbage truck was where it shouldn’t have been because the crime was perpetrated on a Sunday. The context of this important element of the investigation extends backward in time far beyond that single lazy weekend morning. It is complex contextually, but imagery is used to brilliantly on the part of the prosecution to state the facts far more succinctly than one usually gets during a trial:
"The Landy family—that was our victim, Melissa, who was twelve, her thirteen-year-old sister, Sarah, mother, Regina, and stepfather, Kensington—lived on Windsor Boulevard in Hancock Park. The home was about a block north of Wilshire and in the vicinity of the Trinity United Church of God, which on Sundays back then drew about six thousand people to its two morning services. People parked their cars all over Hancock Park to go to the church. That is, until the residents there got tired of their neighborhood being overrun every Sunday with traffic and parking issues.”
