This was the final book in the L.A Quartet. I believe, ultimately, it was his weakest in the trilogy. While the action skips along, the prose becomes a little disjointed and sloppy. We are kept in the sphere of the general plot-line, but the details become muddled and the ideas not as great as they could have been because of the presentation. The dialogue, as well, does not appeared as focused and sharp as in the other books. A decent ride, but a disappointing ending to the L.A Quartet.

3 stars. ( )

Lt. Dave Klein is put on a burglary case he's disinterested in, but he suspects police chief Edmund Exley is using him for other purposes.

This is the final book in a loose series written by Ellroy; given where the last book ended, I was hoping for a lot more of the story that was started in the previous title. However, this book starts with yet another main character (curiously enough, speaking in a first-person narration, which has not happened since the first book the series) working on a case seemingly unconnected with the issues of the last book. The case itself is not interesting, nor is its nonsensical resolution that basically falls in Klein's lap with him doing minimal police work to get the facts. At this point, Ellroy seems to be derivative of himself, repeating the same types of things we saw in the previous books but acting like it's a new angle.

Furthermore, while all of Ellroy's protagonists have been less-than-stellar people (to put it mildly in some cases), this is the first time his main character is downright unlikable. I didn't really feel like there were any high stakes here because I didn't care what happened Klein. In fact, it was disappointing that of all Ellroy's protagonists Klein is one of the few who remains alive at the end of his book. This title does end somewhat ambiguously, although not on as much of a cliffhanger as the previous two in the series.

For the audiobook reader, I was amazed to find myself unhappy with Scott Brick as the narrator for this book. While I've loved Brick's narration of other books in the past, he was not a good fit here. He could do distinct voices and accents well, but his tone was all wrong for Klein and for the book as a whole. When I've read other noir-style mystery titles as audiobooks in the past (including ones in this series), the readers have managed to convey that old-film style of speech that fits the genre well. In addition, Ellroy's use of short, staccato sentences did not mesh well with the audiobook format (or perhaps just with Brick's reading of this title).

Overall, this was a big letdown for the finale of a series I had been invested in reading. ( )

Even burning the dross off of prose leaves something haunted. The menace in Ellroy's streets is a puzzling presence, certainly along the likes of Mieville and Sinclair as it detours into origins and auras, Merleau-Ponty's flux made manifest in gridded streets and contained populations and vices. Ellroy slipped some going into the final act: hyperbole infected his plot and pus reigned supreme. Why have a voyeur/killer plot with incest overtones when one can fashion a virtual tribe of such, all of whom are bereft of conclusive geneology. ( )

Wild, disturbing, convoluted, thrilling, depressing. ( )

Bad cops—Chief of Detectives on down. Gangsters—Mickey Cohen—one of them. Good story—but staccato narrative—irritating. ( )

Dwell in the fractured mind of a bent L.A cop.

This book is not for the squeamish. It is laced with violence, gore, racism and brilliance. The first person narrative/stream of consciousness left me exhausted, as Ellroy packs more into a paragraph than most authors do into a chapter. The fragmented sentences and hard-hitting style add to the already high level of tension, making this a real page turner.

The ruthless Dave Klein is driven by greed and anger, and has no redeeming side to his character, other than protectiveness of his sister, which itself is engendered by an incestuous love.
All of the usual well-drawn characters are in there, including Ed Exley, Dudley Smith and of course Mickey Cohen.

Overall a great read if you are into that gritty, no-holds-barred noir style.
( )

Dwell in the fractured mind of a bent L.A cop.

This book is not for the squeamish. It is laced with violence, gore, racism and brilliance. The first person narrative/stream of consciousness left me exhausted, as Ellroy packs more into a paragraph than most authors do into a chapter. The fragmented sentences and hard-hitting style add to the already high level of tension, making this a real page turner.

The ruthless Dave Klein is driven by greed and anger, and has no redeeming side to his character, other than protectiveness of his sister, which itself is engendered by an incestuous love.
All of the usual well-drawn characters are in there, including Ed Exley, Dudley Smith and of course Mickey Cohen.

Overall a great read if you are into that gritty, no-holds-barred noir style.
( )

This is the last book of the L.A. Quartet series. I enjoyed all four books. This one is following up without much time difference to L.A. Confidential and therefore all main characters are the same ones. This story is closing the unimaginable corruption within the police department, the jealousy between some major players within the LAPD and how one detective/lawyer is trying to solve some of the main puzzles and could go away with his criminal acts to live a peaceful life far away. They are his memories of all actions which are written down. ( )

My first read of James Ellroy. I loved the movie L.A. Confidential, so came into this book thinking the story would be told in a "normal" manner. But if this is his style (and I understand it is) I'll say he's an acquired taste and I'll need a few more samples before I know if I like it a lot or not at all.

Nothing wrong with the plot, although the cast of characters got unwieldy toward the end. I struggled with some of the jargon and slang, but figured much out as I got deeper into the reading. To his credit, Ellroy assumes his reader is intelligent. ( )

I'd be tough to call the seedy, lurid dime novels that probably influenced James Ellroy great literature, and, honestly, I think I'd also be pretty tough to call the stuff he produces great literature, too, though some people have certainly tried. As with most Ellroy books, everything's a bit too intense to be taken altogether seriously, which gives this stuff a sort of cartoonish feel. In Ellroy's literary universe, evil characters are unimaginably twisted rather than merely venal, rogue cops are one-man crime waves with police badges rather than guys in blue who overstep the law, and hot dames are all-out sexpots rather than just pretty women. This stuff is evolved trash, but, to Ellroy's credit, it can also be really fun evolved trash.

Actually, Ellroy gets a bit of credit for keeping keeping things relatively simple in "White Jazz" and for tamping down some of his more extreme noirish tendencies. The police side of thing is more-or-less limited to the misadventures of a single detective, and the plot's relative economy makes the plot a bit more believable -- not to mention easier to follow -- than most of the other novels that make up the author's "L.A. Quartet." His prose's more reined-in, too, and you can see him developing a sparer, more staccato narrative voice that makes his writing in "The Black Dahlia" seem positively florid. Even so, this doesn't mean that you can't call "White Jazz" minimalist in any sense of the word: the book's too long, and readers who refuse to suspend their disbelief are unlikely to finish it. Still, Ellroy's talent for establishing historical setting -- and for writing snappy, cheerfully profane period dialogue -- is sharp as ever; I suspect he'd be a pretty good historian, or at least a good historical novelist, if he ever wanted to give his neo-noir gig a rest. Anyway, after three or four Ellroy novels, I think I'm ready to take a break from him. It's back to the "literary fiction" section for me. I can always re-watch "The Big Sleep" if I feel the need for a dose of seedy, dangerous mid-century L.A. ( )

I hated this book, and it was a real struggle to get through on many levels, including an annoying prose style, density of prose, crazy meandering plot, and a surfeit of characters. And none of these are even the book's greatest flaw. However, there is enough of a compelling sense of style, history, place and momentum that I thought the book balanced out to a 3 rather than a zero.

It's not that I don't like midcentury American crime, even if it has to be set in ignoble LA. I don't particularly care for all the layers of police procedure, but even that can easily be overlooked. BUT I cannot forgive an author making me wade through 350 pages and never presenting any evidence of humanity on the part of his hero.

In this case, every single character is beyond redemption. The world would be a better place if they were all dead. There is no humanity at all, and every time you think you see a glimpse, events serve to stomp it out with a vengeance. Two buddies, JC and Herrick, come to LA to make their fortunes? Have them screw each other's wives! Give a weak man a chance to protect his sister? Turn it into an incestuos peep show! Displaced refugees? Show only their ugly underbelly! A love story amid the ruin? Make it completely unmotivated and unlikely, so as to render it meaningless. And finally: give Dave Klein a chance to confess and reptent, and spend the last lines of the book reminding us he's only concerned about squaring up with the world, not God or his own sense of morality.

The best thing I can guess about Ellroy, who I have not read before, is that it does not appear that he hates women as much as he does everyone else. They alone escape - numb and stupid, but innocent.

Endless, horrible, over-the-top, disgustingly enthusiastic racism: considering he wrote this book in '01, Ellroy is either a genius at insisting on accuracy, or he just enjoys it all a little too much. It reads like the latter. And please don't say "he busts on everyone - blacks, jews, etc." as though it were an excuse.

The tight, staccato prose *might* be palatable for a short story. Of under five thousand words. At such length, it's giving me a headache even thinking about it.

People say JE has written better books. Not sure I'll be up for finding out myself for a while. ( )

*2015 Reading Challenge*: A book you own but have never read