Customer Reviews

Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

James Ellroy, after only 3 books, has taken his place among my most favorite writers. Ellroy's collection of fiction and non-ficiton is a mixed bag, but mostly excellent. The best essay is "Let's Twist Again," a return to his junior high days. I expected something more elegiac and less upbeat, but the change of tone suits the peace. In fact, it is one of the best pieces I have ever read about those forgotten Jr. High years. Frankly, the weakest piece is the Sinatra crime story--TiJuana, Mon Amour. There was nothing much new it in it and the other long short stories, esp. the Dick Contino piece were better. Danny Getchell as a narrator is better in short bursts. There are more mediations on his mother's murder, but even if you have read "My Dark Places" they add a bit of perspective. I loved his piece on the LA Confidential movie/Curtis Hanson, the piece of the Sheriff's Homicide Department, and the OJ Simpson story. As an avowed OJ junkie, I love to read anything new on it. Perhaps not his strongest work, but certainly worth a read if you enjoy his work. Sadly, the introduction is written by the late Art Cooper of GQ, who many of us still miss.

The strangest crime-novel ever written. It is in fact an autobiographical attempt that tries to connect the past and the future. The past of the time when the author's mother was murered in L.A. and the police did not find any solution to the case, with the present of when he gets back into her file and finds nothing, and the present of another mother who got murdered and whose murderer will never be caught. And the future of tomorrow 2034 and what the author will be as a senile senior citizen, and what the kids of today will be then. The whole journey and perspective is set on a background of dark - very dark - vision : L.A. as a place of permanent crime, of eternal murders that will never be solved, of perpetual war among all the polices of the region, of neverending psychotic schizophrenia for actors, would-be actors, might-be actors, might-ever-be-would-be actors, etc. The author sounds psychotic about it and at the same time his sanity seems to be dependent on that constant unbalanced and unsolved psychotic crisis that he has been carrying since the age of seven, when his parents split. Too personal to be a real crime novel, and yet too imaginative to be a real autobiography. It stands up like a book that is difficult to follow at times. The chapters, sections and parts are ordered in succession but they do not build a line, a road, a way, a vista. They are imploded one into the other and we get exploded out into some fantasy or boredom.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

As with another reviewer I am a huge Ellroy fan. I have read everything he has written. To be completely honest I did not like many of the sections in this book. The two stories dealing with the Hush Hush editor were forced and too filled with aliteration. While it was obviously Ellroy's intent to write the stories as Gretchell would have done in his magazine, the style crippled Ellroy's talent. In short by tyring to write like an annoying parasite, Ellroy created two annoying stories.
That being said, if you are an Ellroy fan buy it, Ellroy writting is like a certain sex act, even when it's bad it's still very good. If you have not read Ellroy before, pass this one by and start the L.A. saga books and by purchasing "The Black Dhalia"

Ellroy's collected writings for GQ magazine from 199399 are collected in this hodgepodge of essays and three short stories. For those (like me) who've never read Ellory before and want to test the waters of his LA-centric writings, this seems to be as good a place as any. The first three essays are grouped under the theme "Unsolved". The first is about his own mother's murder in an LA suburb of El Monte in 1958 and was expanded into the book My Dark Places. The second recounts the unsolved murder of a woman in El Monte in 1973, and the third retells the death of a smalltime druggie actress in 1963.

Next come two "LA Confidential" era stories narrated by Hush-Hush editor Danny Getchell (the Danny Devito character in the film). These stories are virtual carbon copies in terms of subject matter (sex, murder, blackmail, crooked cops, degenerate celebrities) and style (period slang and alliteration galore). While I'll agree that Ellroy's prose is punchy and full of juice, he's over-dependent on alliteration. Once or twice a page is plenty, once or twice a paragraph is overkill.

Next is an essay about the life and times of a '50s teen idol accordion player named Dick Contino. This is a fairly interesting piece revealing the fleeting nature of celebrity and the patriotic fervor of the '50s. Ellroy tracked him down and then wrote a 57-page novella with him as the hero narrator. Unfortunately, "Hollywood Shakedown" is exactly like the two previous Hush-hush stories, which if you like that kind of thing is fine I suppose. Personally, I grew to find them tiresome and repetitive. Part of the problem is that all his characters speak the same clipped hard-boiled way in every story. The most egregious case being the accordion player Contino who in his narrative uses plenty of alliteration, exactly as Danny Getchell does in the previous stories. Certain words and phrases crop up over and over throughout the story, becoming more drab with every use, for example, sapphic, tumescent, SIN-sational, to name just the first three that come to mind.

The final section is perhaps my favorite, including a sharp essay on O.J. Simpson; an engaging profile of the L.A. County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau; a piece on Curtis Hanson (director of LA Confidential); and best of all, Ellroy's reminiscences about his LA junior high school. This last piece, in which he vividly recreates the world of his youth in early 1960s LA and then organizes a junior high reunion is easily the warmest in the book. This and the O.J. Simpson piece are the only two in the whole book in which one gets a sense of Ellroy as a regular human (in the O.J. piece he's an angry human), albeit one still perhaps unhealthily obsessed with the past. All in all, the collection certainly doesn't inspire me to pursue Ellroy's fiction, but I am interested in reading more of his essays.

Dig it dad: James Ellroy is at the top of the heap when it comes to writing crime fiction, because he's not afraid to look at the bottom of the barrel. CRIMEWAVE is another brutal look at Los Angeles in all of it's sordid glory in an era when there was a reason that foot patrolman were called beat cops. From the stark, icy descriptions of malevolent mayhem most of his readers will never see, to his diabolically derived detachment, the demon dog delivers a devastating package with every pulsating page...so put down the crack, jack and pick up your slacks. The demon dog wants to take you down to places that will leave you trembling with trepidation and delirious with desperation.

4.5 stars

Not every piece here is a gem, but those that are shine brightly. The take on the OJ case is sheer genius, and well worth picking this book up for by itself. Add some nice tight shorts on the LAPD homicide squad, an unnerving story about Ellroy's mother's murder (later expanded into a fine book), and a few variously successful fiction bits, and it's a fine introduction to Ellroy's beautifully taut and slashing prose. American Tabloid remains his peak, but ample evidence of his talent is on display here.

And see if you don't find that OJ essay the very best writing on the subject. Unsparing and accurately harsh, it rings as true today as when it was written. And that's the mark of great writing.

While James Ellroy has many fans, and while agreeing that short articles are undoubtedly his metier, I found that a whole book made up of these sentences was just too much !! His love affair with alliteration is fine for a few phrases, but whole chapters..just too tiring.This was probably the wrong book to read as an introduction to his work, so I'll try another where the style is a little more flowing so that one can concentrate on the story without being irritated by hte jerky sentences.

The Demon Dog dishes out his dirtiest, most daring, most dastardly, debauchery to date. Getchell's got giant gonads and guts galore. Contino carries charismatic crime capers to catastrophic climaxes. Ellory's emotional actual-event epitaphs encourage entire exposure. Love these legendary lores that lay down the law and lore you in.

After watching him interviewed on E!, I had to check out his book. If anyone is into Los Angeles' History and crime stories, this book is for you. There also some fiction (that seems so real) in the book about some big 50s and 60s icons such as the Rat Pack and friends. Some of the language is before my times (70s child here), but soon you will be hip with lingo, and calling things "boss".

My copy of AMERICAN TABLOID was so worn I had to replace it. Huge fan since my university years. I have all of his books. Most are superb. Some are good. Some are wanting. This one is the WORST!

For a good writer (and Ellroy is an excellent one!) to put out a bad book is understandable. This one though is PURE FAN EXPLOITATION.

The same stories over and over, themes all too familiar from his earlier books. Absolutely NOTHING New! And the "jazz just ain't there". Stories that fizzle and die long before they are actually over. Gone are the scents, the tastes, the feel of life in the margins. Words only pretending to be cool, characters nobody cares about to love or hate or pity.

If you want to sample James Ellroy start with BLACK DAHLIA and work your way up to the COLD SIX THOUSAND.

I am still waiting for the sequel to the that one.