Conviction by Julia Dahl

Published by Minotaur Books on March 28, 2017

Given how often the justice system produces unjust results, I’m always intrigued by stories that shine a spotlight on wrongful convictions. Conviction uses the conviction of an innocent man to spotlight injustice in other ways, and it accomplishes that task by telling an entertaining story.

Rebekah Roberts is a freelance reporter. She works as a stringer for a tabloid while aspiring to be a meaningful journalist. Some years earlier, the police discovered the dead bodies of the Davis family (husband, wife, foster daughter) in Brooklyn. One son found the bodies; a foster son, DeShawn, was convicted of murdering the victims. Roberts decides to investigate a claim that DeShawn was wrongfully convicted. Along the way, she learns that the ex-cop to whom her mother is currently attached helped investigate the killing.

The story follows Roberts as she tracks down witnesses in the closed case. Alternating chapters follow the police in 1992 as they investigate the murders. Conviction makes the point that it is ridiculously easy to frame someone for a crime, and just as easy for the police to bully an innocent person into giving a confession.

The reader knows early on that DeShawn is innocent. As Rebekah investigates, she suspects he’s telling the truth, but that leads to the mystery at the heart of the story: who killed DeShawn’s foster parents, and why would anyone murder such nice people?

The story shifts gears at the midway point as it begins to follow a boy who rejects his family’s religious views and adopts a less relaxed form of Judaism. He also becomes disproportionately violent when he’s being picked on. The young man is clearly headed for a life of violence.

Julia Dahl deserves credit for understanding how wrongful convictions happen with depressing regularity — in this case (like many real-world examples) because the police fail to play by the rules that are meant to protect the innocent. At the same time, she doesn’t paint all police officers with the same brush. As in the real world, some are sympathetic, some are lazy, some are corrupt, some are good, and many are a combination of all those things. The novel reflects the sad reality that many police officers and prosecutors care more about getting a conviction than convicting the right person, however well-intentioned they might be.

Conviction is notable for its descriptions of poverty and urban decay in Brooklyn and for its depiction of vigilantes that purport to protect their insular communities by attacking outsiders. The book is also notable for its descriptions of racial tension between the black and Jewish communities in 1990s Brooklyn, including mutual resentment between slumlords and tenants. I appreciated the fearless and balanced way in which that conflict is portrayed. Dahl looks for truth beyond stereotypes and finds it in a nuanced drama about crime and injustice.

The end of the story stretches the plausibility limit a bit, but far less than most modern thrillers. There’s a little too much melodrama in the last chapters, but the melodrama is far from overwhelming. On the whole, Conviction is a strong tale of social and individual injustice.

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