Silent Terror [Hardcover]

James Ellroy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1986

In this crime novel, there is a man on the loose in America. A man who kills for the sheer pleasure of spilling blood. A man who rearranges the mutilated bodies of his victims in positions that, to him, have the purity of art. The author also wrote "The Big Nowhere" and "Suicide Hill".

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

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Blood & Guts Press (December 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940941007
• ISBN-13: 978-0940941007
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,165,207 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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Chilling and coldly compelling, December 11, 2001

By 

F. J. Harvey "Cricket ,country music and a go... (Birmingham England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silent Terror (Hardcover)

Real horror does not shout,it whispers.Dangerous people are seldom prone to rant and rave but go about their work in silence and with an outward appearance of normality. This strikes home forcibly with Ellroy's masterly but chilly book
Martin Plunkett is a serial killer and his narrative interspersed with newspaper clippings tells of his murderous and depraved odyssey in 70's America.Evil told in the accents and tone of one recounting a trip to the shopping mall,

Midway through the book Ellroy pulls a twist that throws the reader shrwedly off balance and keeps him that way throughout

I admired the book but without really liking it,maybe its that I like a moral centre to my crime writing and this is a massively amoral book
Just like the century that spawned it Ellroy's book is a fascinating,compelling thing but dont look for the easy resolution of empty comfort of the archetypal crime novel
Fiction as reality ,not as escapism

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High-quality read from a very high-quality author, March 8, 2000

By 

Luke Pebody (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Terror (Hardcover)

James Ellroy's mastery for dark crime tales comes to the fore here with possibly his best book (certainly ranking alongside 'American Tabloid' for plot, and 'The Black Dahlia' for the characterisation of obsessives). The tale is the startling autobiography of a captured serial killer, Martin Michael Plunkett, from his childhood, through his career as a killer all across America, to his eventual capture by and mind-games with FBI Serial Killer Task Force agent Thomas Dusenberry.

Plunkett is an articulate ruthless genius, and his narration, is such that it keeps you glued to the pages. As in much of Ellroy's work, all the characters, policeman, murderers, victims are painted with a dark brush. The result, as always, is a book which is almost impossible to put down.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Ellroy -- back in print retitled, August 19, 2000

By 

Mitchell Marks "mitch-4" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Silent Terror (Hardcover)

This very good early Ellroy has been reissued with the title "Killer on the Road", standard book number 038080896X .