Customer Reviews

Zoot-Suit Murders

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This is a thoroughly engaging and fascinating novel about prejudice and intrigue on the home front during World War II. While not as incredibly as intense--or heart-rending--as Rabbit Boss, his previous novel, this is a gripping story with fascinating characters and puts wartime jingoism and xenophobia into an intensely personal light. This is a writer who pulls no punches and can be utterly unsentimental. He has an exceptional command of detail and pulls the reader along into a complex but believable web of intrigue. Sanchez always avoids cliches (I wish I could!) and avoids a polemic, making his point in an engaging and thrilling story line.

The Portuguese have a word, "saudade," described as the seventh most difficult word in the language to translate. But I'll try: it refers to the longing one can feel for something one hasn't actually experienced. ZOOT SUIT MURDERS takes people back to the duck tail era if they knew it, produces saudade in the rest of its readers. Sanchez will often accumulate 100 pages of hand written notes - phrases, sentences, half sentences - while searching for a voice. He does not begin writing a story until he has found that voice and is thinking in it. This is one of the secrets to his powerful ability to lure his readers into time and place and make the present recede.

I was attracted by the cover quote on this book by the famous Los Angeles Times book critic Robert Kirsch(he reviewed for over 25 years). Kirsch claimed that, "ZOOT-SUIT MURDERS matches the best of the war novels and may be the best of the home-front novels of World War II." Having read virtually every book about Los Angeles set in this period, and having many releatives who lived through this time, some were service men, others were Zoot-Suiters, I agree completely. Here's why: Sanchez is not pandering to any predictable ethnic notions, he tells a complex story about a time in our history when to be different was to be suspect of being un-American, he goes beyond types and has his characters acting with believable motivations, from corrupt politicians to young Mexican-American kids caught in the racist hysteria of the time. The title itself is greatly ironic, for it points up the fact that the Zoot-Suiters murdered no one, they themselves were murdered by the yellow press of the time. Bravo to Sanchez for getting it right.

I had really wanted to like this novel, but I couldn't. As a Mexican-American from Los Angeles, I had looked forward to reading a novel involving an important aspect of the city's history. This book failed to provide any insight and it gives a skewed view of the Mexican youth of that city during the 1940's.

To believe the writer, every Mexican-American youth was wearing the zoot suit, a gang member, and a dupe of anti-American groups. As someone who has been studying this period and issue, I can say that this is a gross misunderstanding.

I am especially shocked that the author, who was apparently a civil rights advocate in earlier years, had no major Hispanic characters, and promoted such a naïve view of Hispanics. I take it that given his surname, he too is Hispanic.

Aside from those problems, the writing and story line are incredibly poor and dull. The main characters are of little interest, and his persistent reference to the color of the main female character's hair bordered on obsessive (yeah, I get it, her hair is RED, and it's a metaphor, thanks!). I understand that this writer has had more successful books, I hope so, but this is one to avoid.

... should you be tempted to read this book. The subject matter, WWII, Los Angeles in it's "noir" heyday, the Zoots, the California cults, and a gumshoe, all make it sound pretty intriguing. But Sanchez does not have control of his material, it does not cohere, the "center does not hold." Even though the bare-bones plot could work and Sanchez has a good grip on the Los Angeles of that era, his characters are not even as dimensional as cardboard. And Sanchez gets quite carried away with his verbal pyrotechnic assaults. It's another book that makes one long for serious editorial guidance.