The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, American Tabloid... James Ellroy's high-velocity, best-selling novels have redefined noir for our age, propelling us within inches of the dark realities of America's recent history. Now, in The Cold Six Thousand, his most ambitious and explosive novel yet, he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speedball through our most tumultuous time. It begins in Dallas. November 22, 1963. The heart of the American Dream detonated. Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop, arrives with a loathsome job to do. He's got $6,000 in cash and no idea that he is about to plunge into the cover-up conspiracy already brewing around Kennedy's assassination, no idea that this will mark the beginning of a hellish five-year ride through the private underbelly of public policy. Ellroy's furiously paced narrative tracks Tedrow's ride: Dallas back to Vegas, with the Mob and Howard Hughes, south with the Klan and J. Edgar Hoover, shipping out to Vietnam and returning home, the bearer of white powder, plotting new deaths as 1968 approaches ... Tedrow stands witness, as the icons of an iconic era mingle with cops, killers, hoods, and provocateurs. His story is ground zero in Ellroy's stunning vision: historical confluence as American Nightmare. The Cold Six Thousand is a masterpiece.
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"Yah, this one gets 5 stars too. I loved American Tabloid - never read anything like it, and so I'd give AT 6 stars if I could. I've had the hardcover of this one for years, and had it half-finished before I walked away. Went with the audiobook version instead and plowed right through it. So yes, five stars, but I feel the need to take a verrry long shower to try and get this book off of me. With perhaps the tiny exception of RFK, there are NO redeemable characters in this book. Everyone is a scumbag. There are high-level scumbags who fall in with low-level scumbags. And the scumbag alliances that are struck are characterized by one scumbag trying to out-scumbag the other scumbag. And just when Ellroy has manipulated you into sympathizing with one of the three main characters, because he at least believes in something other than money, that character ends up orchestrating a gay-tryst shakedown involving a prominent civil rights leader. The arcs of each of the three protagonists are fascinating, and the writer's style annoys less with a skilled narrator doing the reading, in my opinion. I've started worrying plot holes now that I'm finished, and I felt like the central cataclysmic events happened rather bloodlessly (bloodlessly being relative in an Ellroy book). The RFK assassination seemed almost wedged in, especially in the wake of MLK, Jr. Obviously, I know the historical timeline, but I'm not sure that Ellroy needed to cover both events. On the other hand, RFK was Ward Littel's raison d'etre, so in some ways, Ellroy HAD to include it. So while I do have quibbles, the style, the characterizations, the grittiness, the audacity - all of those things combine to make this another winner for Ellroy.
Now on to 'Blood's A Rover'. For those of you who listened to the audio version of The Cold Six Thousand, Craig Wasson does the narration on Bloods A Rover as well. However, he pronounces names differently - 'Carlos MarCHello' as opposed to 'Carlos MarSello' or 'Ward Little' as opposed to 'Ward Lit-TELL'. In addition, he uses different voices for characters that have carried over from the prior book. It's a little bit distracting. Thankfully, his fey, sinister voice for J. Edgar Hoover remains intact."
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Jeremy (5 out of 5 stars)