James Ellroy's

American Tabloid: A Novel
$16.00
I loved Elroy's LA Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and White Jazz), so was looking forward to this book and really wanted to like it, so much so that I read it a second time to give it another chance after not liking it much the first time.

But American Tabloid doesn't work nearly as well for me as the Quartet, mainly because I bought into the noirish world of the first four books, but not into the interlocking conspiracies of American Tabloid. It was too over-the-top, and frequently seemed a parody of itself. How could Boyd, Littell, and Bondurant be in the middle of everything? American Tabloid also lacked the narrative drive and focus and the deeper characterizations of the Quartet. Elroy has written some of my favorite books, but this wasn't among them.

The Big Nowhere
$14.95
This was my first Ellroy that I had read when I picked him up in 1995, I loved the book then and thought it might have been the greatest crime fiction I had ever read.

Rereading the novel, I am slightly less enamoured by the book, mainly due the seemingly rushed pace of the last 50 pages but it is still a brilliant piece of work and makes anything that the author has written since American Tabloid seem pretty weak.

You get a great feel for the main characters (Danny, Mal and Buzz) and the mental tortures that the three of them endure throughout the book.

Recommended if you have the time to immerse yourself totally in the book, it is not a novel that one can just pick up and put down and hope to pick up again a few days later as the plot is so complex and interwoven.

The Black Dahlia
$13.99
James Ellroy constructs a compelling mystery and human drama surrounding the true unsolved murder of Betty Short in 1947. LA cops Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard are partners and former boxing rivals who fall on rough times when the Short murder is discovered. Bucky is another deftly drawn Ellroy protagonist, morally compromised and neck deep in a swamp of corruption, but longing to find redemption, love, and peace. He becomes obsessed not only with the abused Short but also his partner's secrets and his beautiful lover. It is rare that a novel can be so unsparing, harsh, and grisly, yet so genuinely touching as well. As in the other outstanding entries in the LA Quartet, Ellroy brings the period to life as an unparalleled noir setting.

White Jazz: A Novel
$14.95
WHITE JAZZ stared at me from the shelf for two years before I cracked it open. I read a few pages and put it down, annoyed. It was confusing. I couldn't adapt to its beat. But I picked it up again and plunged in deeper. The rhythm of the staccato prose kicked in. The urgency of the plot swept me up. This stench of corruption overwhelmed me. It was intricate, complex, assured -- brilliantly freeform but always tightly structured. Late night reading led to swirling nighttime visions -- jazz that kept playing long after the pages had been slammed shut. Dangerous. Addictive. Feverish stuff.