Cold Six Thousand [Paperback]

James Ellroy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2002

This story is set in Dallas, in the November of '63. The heart of the American Dream detonated, Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop, arrives with a loathsome job to do. He's got six thousand in cash and no idea he is about to plunge into the cover-up conspiracy already brewing around the assassination of JFK, 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 journey: Dallas 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...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With its hypnotic, staccato rhythms, and words jostling, bumping, marching forward with edgy intensity (like lemmings heading toward a cliff of their own devising), The Cold Six Thousand feels as if it's being narrated by a hopped-up Dr. Seuss who's hungrier for violence than for green eggs and ham. In spinning the threads of post-JFK-assassination cultural chaos, James Ellroy's whirlwind riff on the 1960s takes nothing for granted, except that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Hurtling from Las Vegas to Vietnam to Cuba to Memphis and back again (and all points in between), from Dealey Plaza to opium fields to smoke-filled back rooms where the mob holds sway, the novel traces the strands of complicity, greed, and fear that connect three men to a legion of supporting characters: Ward Littell, a former Feeb whose current allegiance to the mob and to Howard Hughes can't mask his admiration for the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; Pete Bondurant, a hit man and fervent anti-Communist who splits his time between Vegas casinos and CIA-sponsored heroin labs in Saigon; and Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop who's sent to Dallas in late November 1963 to snuff a black pimp, and who is fighting a losing battle against his predilection for violence: "Junior was a hider. Junior was a watcher. Junior lit flames. Junior torched. Junior lived in his head."

And behind these three, J. Edgar Hoover is the master puppeteer, pulling strings with visionary zeal and resolute pragmatism, the still point around whom the novel roils and tumbles. At once evil and comic, Hoover predicts that LBJ "will deplete his prestige on the home front and recoup it in Vietnam. History will judge him as a tall man with big ears who needed wretched people to love him," and feels that Cuba "appeals to hotheads and the morally impaired. It's the cuisine and the sex. Plantains and women who have intercourse with donkeys."

The Seussian comparison isn't that far-fetched: Ellroy's novel, like the children's books (and like the very decade it limns), is flexible, spontaneous, and unabashedly off-kilter. Weighing in at a hefty 700 pages, The Cold Six Thousand is a trifle bloated by the excesses of its narrative form. But what glorious excess it is, as Ellroy continues to illuminate the twin impulses toward idealism and corruption that frame American popular and political culture. He deftly puts unforgettable faces and voices to the murkiest of conspiracy theories, and simultaneously mocks our eager assumption that such knowledge will make a difference. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Clipped, stylized, hard-nosed and repetitive, this novel cuts like a dark, 24-hour Beat poem and sounds like Jack Webb on crack. Ellroy's latest noir tale is full of his trademark violence, sex and rough language. Readers follow five years in the life of Las Vegas police officer Wayne Tedrow Jr., who begins the novel making a trip to Dallas to kill a pimp for $6,000. From there, Tedrow is inadvertently mixed up with practically every cultural and political event and figure of the 1960s: Vietnam, Cuba, the Kennedy assassinations, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, Sonny Liston, mobster Carlos Marcellos, Martin Luther King Jr. and J. Edgar Hoover. Craig Wasson does an excellent job of translating the written page into a day-length rap of short phrases, peppering listeners with rapid cuts and jabs until they are exhausted yet exhilarated.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 669 pages
• Publisher: Arrow (May 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099893304
• ISBN-13: 978-0099893301
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (114 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,997,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed L.A. Qurtet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover. He is the author of one work of non-fiction, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 700 pages of adrenaline fueled savagery, May 12, 2001

By 

W. H. Jamison, Jr. (Burien, Washington United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cold Six Thousand (Hardcover)

How do you follow a novel like American Tabloid, the definitive Kennedy assassination conspiracy novel? You write a novel like The Cold Six Thousand, which is the definitive RFK, MLK, Vietnam, Howard Hughes, Mafia, Las Vegas and J. Edgar Hoover conspiracy novel. The Cold Six Thousand starts off where Tabloid ended, on the 22nd of November 1963, the day of Kennedy's assassination. We are reintroduced to characters we have met in earlier novels (Pete Bondurant from White Jazz and American Tabloid) and Ward Littell (from American Tabloid) and to new characters such as the Tedrows, father Wayne Sr. and son Wayne Jr. Wayne Jr., a Las Vegas police officer, is sent to Dallas to kill a pimp, his fee for doing so, six thousand untraceable dollars. The roller coaster ride begins here, weaving his fictional characters in with real life characters (Jack Ruby, J. Edgar Hoover and Bayard Rustin to name a few) Ellroy takes us on a savage tour of the dark and ugly side of the 1960s from a heroin processing operation in Vietnam to the civil rights marches of the American south with plenty of stops in Las Vegas which Ward Littell is attempting to purchase for Howard Hughes while still allowing the mob to stay in control and collect their skim. Some of Ellroy's takes on the activities of the right wingers at the time might seem a little outre and exaggerated, but after reading Rick Perlstein's _Before the Storm_ and David Halberstam's _The Best and the Brightest_ I find that Ellroy is right on target skewering the nuts of the extreme right wing who infested our country during the 1960s. The only reason I didn't give this book five stars is that it bogs down in places. Ellroy needs an editor with balls big enough to say "James, cut this part out, it drags the story". Still, even if the story drags in places Ellroy picks things up quickly and soon you're reading along and feeling as breathless if you just went on a five mile run and smoked a carton of Camels.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Didn't anybody else like this book?, July 21, 2001

By 

Peter J. Bakely (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cold Six Thousand (Hardcover)

This isn't a difficult book by any stretch of the imagination. It's written in one syllable words. Ellroy couldn't write badly if his life depended on it. In an era where most author's take chapter after chapter to get to the meat of the story, Ellroy starts with the meat and chews it up in front of you, like an angry dog. This book is admittedly not my favorite Ellroy book,(that would be White Jazz, also a staccato masterpiece), but it's still the best new book I've read this year.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What happened?, December 28, 2005

By 

El Perro Patron "WWVD" (In Exile) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cold Six Thousand (Paperback)

I've read and enjoyed everything that Ellroy has written. I think that American Tabloid is the best fiction book I've ever read. But the sequel is just plain lacking. While the plot and the cast of characters are still classic Ellroy, the writing itself is lazy and sloppy. What the hell is up with all the 2 and 3 word sentences? Ellroy's always used this tool sparingly. But in this book, its prevalent. Its like he printed his short hand notes instead of the novel. I don't know if Ellroy was in a hurry to get something to market or if he really does think this style is "Cool and edgy" but I just found is plain annoying. This is a major stumble for a great writer. Hopefully he can pull it together for the next novel.