Customer Reviews

Silent Terror

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

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

A very unusual crime novel, with the plot all in the last 10 pages, using typical Ellroy news headlines we saw in LA Confidential. A study of the criminal subculture that 99% of the population will never come across unless they are robbed or murdered. For those of faint hearts, or otherwise normal, this is very pornographic, sick and violent.