Dice, Claire Baylis

WARNING: This book discusses sexual offences, and the related trial proceedings.

DICE is a debut novel from NZ author Claire Baylis. The subject matter is confronting, not just because it is seemingly based on a real life case, the styling is inventive, and the outcomes devastating, infuriating and searingly illuminating.

DICE takes the reader through the complicated trial of four teenage boys, charged with the sexual assault of multiple victims, based around a sex game they invented. The novel works it's way through jury selection, aspects of the trial and jury deliberation to the final verdict. Unsurprisingly, the author of this work is a law researcher, with the awarding of her PhD coming with a coveted Doctoral Dean's List entry which included the notation "whose work makes an outstanding contribution to their field of research." You might, therefore, be forgiven for thinking that this novel is going to come across as a research tome, which it definitely doesn't. The subject is difficult, but the insight into the workings of the jury in this case, and the impact of the facts on all parties, is elegantly delivered. In the author's own words:

My critical thesis drew on real jurors' voices to investigate the use of the story model of jury decision-making, heuristic processing and the influence of rape mythology in sexual violence cases. The novel is narrated from the jurors' perspectives in a fictional case, which raises issues of consent, "date-rape", the use of social media and the Legal System's response. By writing from a variety of perspectives the novel also examines concepts of truth, bias and subjectivity.

It was almost impossible to come away from this novel without that aspect of "rape mythology" resonating in my reader's head. The impact that the case had on the victims in particular, and the jury member's was stark and very confronting. The way that the jury system and, in particular, adversarial justice systems, appear utterly unfit for purpose, not just because of the changing impacts of social media and societal sensibility, remain impossible to forget. The comparisons between the story here, and many of the recent, rape and sexual assault related cases in Australia, impossible to avoid, what with the taking of sides, the attack dogs, the puerile and intrusive commentary. 

This is, undoubtedly, confronting reading. How teenage boys could "invent" a game that involves dice to select victims and their means of assault should be beyond a reader's compression, sadly it's not. How the victims would react, feel and subsequently behave should be unpredictable and confronting, and sadly it is. How the justice system handles the case, how member's of the jury can put aside personal prejudices and expectations should hold some hope for an improvement in attitudes and reactions, but sadly there was something soberingly prescient in there. Of course, knowing that there was a real case at the back of this novel made it considerably more discomforting, and worrying. 

All of that might be making it sound like a novel best approached with considerable caution, but there is also something informative and very illuminating about DICE. In using the perspective of each of the jurors to explore the case, with all their reactions and preconceptions, it examines the potential pitfalls of the legal process, and the way that individual prejudices are very hard to detect, and manage in that sort of group dynamic. The depth of the social commentary here is useful, informative, and illuminating, as is the way that the novel itself sometimes lurched around in some of the back-stories, and got a tad messy at points. Somehow that made it more realistic, more moving, and considerably more upsetting. Life is messy, the world is changing, and our legal systems need to put some work into keeping up. Good crime fiction, like DICE, tackles these sorts of questions head on.