At first glance, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers would appear to be a crime novel about highly organised drug peddling in a run-down area of Los Angeles called The Boxes. There’s a police raid on a crack den in the opening pages in which an innocent young girl is killed in the line of fire. The reader is introduced to East (short for Easton), a solemn fifteen-year-old, employed by his uncle, Fin, a gangland boss, to act as a watcher outside the various drug houses he owns. East is held responsible for not alerting his fellow lookouts in time and receives a death threat from another member of the gang before being called into Fin’s presence.

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