The Cold Six Thousand: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "They sent him to Dallas to kill a niger pimp named Wendell Durfee..." (more)
Key Phrases: telephone call transcript, cracked his thumbs, chained cigarettes, Wayne Senior, Las Vegas, Wendell Durfee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With its hypnotic, staccato rhythms, and words jostling, bumping, marching forward with edgy intensity (like lemmings heading toward a cliff of their own devising), The Cold Six Thousand feels as if it's being narrated by a hopped-up Dr. Seuss who's hungrier for violence than for green eggs and ham. In spinning the threads of post-JFK-assassination cultural chaos, James Ellroy's whirlwind riff on the 1960s takes nothing for granted, except that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Hurtling from Las Vegas to Vietnam to Cuba to Memphis and back again (and all points in between), from Dealey Plaza to opium fields to smoke-filled back rooms where the mob holds sway, the novel traces the strands of complicity, greed, and fear that connect three men to a legion of supporting characters: Ward Littell, a former Feeb whose current allegiance to the mob and to Howard Hughes can't mask his admiration for the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; Pete Bondurant, a hit man and fervent anti-Communist who splits his time between Vegas casinos and CIA-sponsored heroin labs in Saigon; and Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop who's sent to Dallas in late November 1963 to snuff a black pimp, and who is fighting a losing battle against his predilection for violence: "Junior was a hider. Junior was a watcher. Junior lit flames. Junior torched. Junior lived in his head."

And behind these three, J. Edgar Hoover is the master puppeteer, pulling strings with visionary zeal and resolute pragmatism, the still point around whom the novel roils and tumbles. At once evil and comic, Hoover predicts that LBJ "will deplete his prestige on the home front and recoup it in Vietnam. History will judge him as a tall man with big ears who needed wretched people to love him," and feels that Cuba "appeals to hotheads and the morally impaired. It's the cuisine and the sex. Plantains and women who have intercourse with donkeys."

The Seussian comparison isn't that far-fetched: Ellroy's novel, like the children's books (and like the very decade it limns), is flexible, spontaneous, and unabashedly off-kilter. Weighing in at a hefty 700 pages, The Cold Six Thousand is a trifle bloated by the excesses of its narrative form. But what glorious excess it is, as Ellroy continues to illuminate the twin impulses toward idealism and corruption that frame American popular and political culture. He deftly puts unforgettable faces and voices to the murkiest of conspiracy theories, and simultaneously mocks our eager assumption that such knowledge will make a difference. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Clipped, stylized, hard-nosed and repetitive, this novel cuts like a dark, 24-hour Beat poem and sounds like Jack Webb on crack. Ellroy's latest noir tale is full of his trademark violence, sex and rough language. Readers follow five years in the life of Las Vegas police officer Wayne Tedrow Jr., who begins the novel making a trip to Dallas to kill a pimp for $6,000. From there, Tedrow is inadvertently mixed up with practically every cultural and political event and figure of the 1960s: Vietnam, Cuba, the Kennedy assassinations, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, Sonny Liston, mobster Carlos Marcellos, Martin Luther King Jr. and J. Edgar Hoover. Craig Wasson does an excellent job of translating the written page into a day-length rap of short phrases, peppering listeners with rapid cuts and jabs until they are exhausted yet exhilarated.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st THUS edition (June 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037572740X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375727405
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #26,857 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 700 pages of adrenaline fueled savagery, May 12, 2001

By	W. H. Jamison, Jr. (Burien, Washington United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Cold Six Thousand (Hardcover)

How do you follow a novel like American Tabloid, the definitive Kennedy assassination conspiracy novel? You write a novel like The Cold Six Thousand, which is the definitive RFK, MLK, Vietnam, Howard Hughes, Mafia, Las Vegas and J. Edgar Hoover conspiracy novel. The Cold Six Thousand starts off where Tabloid ended, on the 22nd of November 1963, the day of Kennedy's assassination. We are reintroduced to characters we have met in earlier novels (Pete Bondurant from White Jazz and American Tabloid) and Ward Littell (from American Tabloid) and to new characters such as the Tedrows, father Wayne Sr. and son Wayne Jr. Wayne Jr., a Las Vegas police officer, is sent to Dallas to kill a pimp, his fee for doing so, six thousand untraceable dollars. The roller coaster ride begins here, weaving his fictional characters in with real life characters (Jack Ruby, J. Edgar Hoover and Bayard Rustin to name a few) Ellroy takes us on a savage tour of the dark and ugly side of the 1960s from a heroin processing operation in Vietnam to the civil rights marches of the American south with plenty of stops in Las Vegas which Ward Littell is attempting to purchase for Howard Hughes while still allowing the mob to stay in control and collect their skim. Some of Ellroy's takes on the activities of the right wingers at the time might seem a little outre and exaggerated, but after reading Rick Perlstein's _Before the Storm_ and David Halberstam's _The Best and the Brightest_ I find that Ellroy is right on target skewering the nuts of the extreme right wing who infested our country during the 1960s. The only reason I didn't give this book five stars is that it bogs down in places. Ellroy needs an editor with balls big enough to say "James, cut this part out, it drags the story". Still, even if the story drags in places Ellroy picks things up quickly and soon you're reading along and feeling as breathless if you just went on a five mile run and smoked a carton of Camels.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tabloid 2, May 31, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cold Six Thousand (Hardcover)

James Ellroy's "The Cold Six Thousand" lacks the kinetic energy of its brilliant predecessor "American Tabloid." Beginning minutes after "Tabloid's" close, "The Cold Six Thousand" traces the underworld history of 1960s America through the morally-impaired eyes of three men: Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Vegas cop sent to Dallas on a mob errand; Ward Littell, an FBI agent whose loyalties shift from the mob to J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes; and Pete Bondurant, an ex-LA sheriff's department officer with an obsessive dream to liberate Cuba from the Communists. While "American Tabloid" covered a reletively brief period of time (1959 to 1963) and focused on the rise and fall of JFK, "The Cold Six Thousand" finishes off the radical sixties and leaps back and forth between historical events (RFK and Martin Luther King assassinations, the Baptist church bombing that killed four black girls, moving heroin in Saigon and the mob's takeover of Vegas) without leading up to anything. And the charcter arcs aren't as well developed as they were "Tabloid" (Ward Littell's brilliant, stunning, earth-shattering comeback from despair in "American Tabloid" makes him one of the most complex of Ellroy's creations.) Though this novel tends to meander, it is hard to dismiss it as an inferior companion piece to "American Tabloid." All the typical Ellroy flourishes are present: dense plotting, scant character and place descriptions, graphic (to the point of absurdity in some places) violence, mixing fictional and historical people, and the three-man construct he first employed in his brilliant 1987 novel "The Big Nowhere." Ellroy may attribute his genius to his ability to create ultra-dense plots filled with characters numbering in the hundreds. However, his real brilliance lies in the fact that he creates such monumentally unsympathetic heroes as his leads. If there is anything Ellroy will be remembered for it will be for straying from the typical "hero" found in mystery fiction today (the beautiful, brilliant "insert your law enforcement title here" vs. the diabolical serial killer "insert gruesome modus operandi here.") Ellroy's heroes are flawed, reckless and corrupt. Liking them takes time. And "The Cold Six Thousand" delivers this in spades. Also evident is Ellroy's unique tele-type writing style. An example: "Pete punched. Pete kicked. Pete walked." For a while this has been a welcome Ellroy trademark in a craft where so many authors are wordy and overbearing in their descriptions. However, reading 688 pages of this ratta-tat-tat style is tiring and, at times, a bit tedious. It's too bad because I loved his prose in books like "Clandestine" and "The Black Dahlia." Then again, neither novel comes remotely close to the ambitious breadth of his latest work. First time Ellroy readers would be better off beginning with his famous LA Quartet of "The Big Nowhere," "LA Confidential," "White Jazz," and "The Black Dahlia." Only the experienced Ellroy reader need apply to "The Cold Six Thousand."

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What happened?, December 28, 2005

By	El Perro Patron "WWVD" (In Exile) - See all my reviews

I've read and enjoyed everything that Ellroy has written. I think that American Tabloid is the best fiction book I've ever read. But the sequel is just plain lacking. While the plot and the cast of characters are still classic Ellroy, the writing itself is lazy and sloppy. What the hell is up with all the 2 and 3 word sentences? Ellroy's always used this tool sparingly. But in this book, its prevalent. Its like he printed his short hand notes instead of the novel. I don't know if Ellroy was in a hurry to get something to market or if he really does think this style is "Cool and edgy" but I just found is plain annoying. This is a major stumble for a great writer. Hopefully he can pull it together for the next novel.