Customer Reviews

The Eighth Circle (CRIME MASTERWORKS)

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Stanley Ellin won the Edgar Award for best novel for this book, and it's well deserved. The only word that comes to my mind to definite this is "perfection". Perfection in writing, plotting, characterization, atmosphere. "The Eighth Circle" is probably one of the best mystery novels ever written, and one of the most deserved Edgar-winners, with Charlotte Jay's "Beat Not The Bones", Chandler's "The Long Goodbye" - to name just two. Don't miss it! Like Nat King Cole would say, it's "unforgettable"...

James Ellroy says somewhere, "the last time a private eye solved a murder was never". Ellin's underrated novel takes it's title from Dante's description of hell: the eighth circle of the inferno is where the lawyers, bribers, and toadies are. The great strength of this book is the real-life description of a detective agency. The author spent months researching the reality of private eyes, so his book does not perpetuate the Chandler-based myth. As a murder mystery THE EIGHTH CIRCLE is only so-so, but the rest is simply wonderful--it really places you in New York in the late 1950's. (The greatest Ellin is probably his short stories: try THE MOMENT OF DECISION.)

I had no idea what to expect of this book. A few page in I thought it was going to be bone dry. But things picked up from there and the job Ellin does of fleshing out the various characters is excellent. Another reviewer says it's only a so-so murder mystery. But it's not a murder mystery at all. It's sort of a slice of life portrait of a real head of a detective agency and as a result of the man's occupation we see certain things. I also see this as a fascinating look at the mores of late 50's america. I could somehow see a lot of these people right alongside the characters in the film The Sweet Smell of Success, though without all the conspicuous drama. I would recommend this book to anyone.

The first reading left me wondering why this was considered a masterwork. Months later I decided to read it a second time to determine why others liked it and I didn't. This novel has enough characters to rival a Tolstoy epic. Every character, minor as well as major, gets the chance to give a speech when participating in a scene much like a play by Shakespeare. In short this novel is pretentious. The research that was done to give the novel an air of authenticity is negated by the romance element that strained credulity. The two main female characters are sterotypes that are offensive. I had to keep reminding myself that Ellin wrote this novel in the fifties when this sort of thing was common in crime fiction. This novel is relevant if one wants to study what was enjoyable in the fifties. Today it shows its age.