I liked the first book but this seemed lacklustre with no real plot or excitement. I'll read the third as I've already bought it but am bored with the style now which uses 5 sentences where 1 will do as the author just repeats the first part of the sentence numerous times, possibly to fill the book out

As excited as I was to read Ellroy's American Tabloid, I found this sequel a bit disappointing. The story continues to follow several mercenaries, politicos, and downright nasty criminal types, as it moves from the JFK assassination in '63, through the assassinations of MLK and RFK in '68. There's a lot of hard-boiled crime and political manipulation stuff that's pretty interesting, as the three main characters try to eliminate anyone in the know about the JFK assassination. However, there are some elements that seem more to be digressions. All of the stuff about heroin trade in Vietnam (in order to fund anti-Castro loyalists in Cuba -- apparently) kind of took away my interest. Probably my biggest problem with the novel was the way it was written. American Tabloid used a quick, noirish, clipped style that made it a fun read. In The Cold Six Thousand, Ellroy takes that style to another level. It's a jazz, scat vocal, written style. Every sentence is simple (as opposed to compound or complex) in the narrative sections. The dialogue and document inserts are a welcome relief from that style. It's a staccato beat that is fun and interesting at the start, but grows old over the course of 600+ pages. The story is quite enjoyable, but the style unfortunately takes away from that enjoyment.

n  Retire me. I'm stretched thin. It hurts to sleep. My hate life's a mess.n

(This review will assume you've read American Tabloid.)

The Cold Six Thousand is a jittery, ugly, brilliant, haunting, flawed, and unforgettable book, and the first thing you need to know about it is I used more commas writing this sentence than James Ellroy used in this entire novel. I just want to get that out of the way. I said that White Jazz's chopped-up style worked well as an expression of Dave Klein's paranoia and rapid consideration of all angles--it also worked well because White Jazz is comparatively short. The Cold Six Thousand is long, and Ellroy uses its style to indicate theme rather than characterization: the "declarative and ugly and right there" style and "bluntness and ugliness" of the reactionary movement he's writing about. I appreciate that and respect the thought that goes into it, but my admiration doesn't make it any easier to read it. It's a problem, but it's a problem you run into only when an artist is working at the edge of a literary form and therefore expanding it.

Our Ellroy trio: Wayne Tedrow, Jr., Las Vegas cop and son of right-wing hate-tract pamphleteer and all-around mover-and-shaker Wayne Tedrow, Sr. and returning guests Pete Bondurant and Ward Littell. There's no way for me to talk about our trio without talking about a structural weakness of the book, which is that only Wayne's story feels like a story.

At the start of the novel, Wayne is paid the titular "cold six thousand" to go to Dallas and kill Wendell Durfee, a pimp who stabbed a blackjack dealer. His father wants him to do it in part because Durfee is black and Wayne, despite growing up in his father's house, just doesn't hate the way he's supposed to. But Wayne finds himself rapidly entangled with a corrupt cop and the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, and he chooses to let Durfee go, a decision which will shape the rest of his life, as he walks, eyes open, further and further into the Life of mobsters, CIA heroin manufacturing in Vietnam, and the not-technically-authorized murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

n  "You're going to do things that you won't be able to live with."
"Maybe I have already."
"It gets worse. And you'll do worse things, just to prove you can take it."n

That's Wayne, who spends the novel discovering a lot of hate and a lot of violence within himself, and who it's impossible to look away from.

With all that going on, it's difficult to miss that Pete and Ward don't have that magnetic appeal here. With Pete, it's less of a problem, because Pete is a more static character. Loving and marrying Barb gave him something to lose in his pursuit of money and power, and it gave him a reason to maybe walk away, but it didn't change his nature: he's fundamentally an agreeable team-player willing to do evil if it benefits him. His story in The Cold Six Thousand is really the aftermath of a story: a long, long epilogue to American Tabloid. He's hungover on his dreams of Cuba. He's not sure if the Mob will forgive his theft. He's not sure Barb will stay with him now that she knows what he's capable of. He's tying up loose ends. You don't expect him to change, and he doesn't: he just gets older and tries to decide what he wants more, the corridors of illicit power or a stable life with Barb.

With Ward, the lack of story is a problem, because Ward's arc in American Tabloid from righteous, eager-to-prove-himself anti-Mob crusader to cold-blooded Mob lawyer to blackmailed and humbled Mob tool was flat-out brilliant. But Ellroy has nowhere new for him to go here, and so Ward ends up vacillating in a way that might be realistic but is definitely undramatic: he falls quickly in unmotivated love with a Kennedy assassination witness and renews his infatuation with Robert Kennedy and spends the whole novel spying on Martin Luther King and facilitating Howard Hughes's takeover of Vegas hotels (all as the Mob wishes) and having conflicting feelings about all of it that plunge him back into the same emotional territory he's already explored. He'd make a stunning supporting character, the way Ed Exley was in White Jazz: his best moments here are all like that, deft evocations of how much he changed over the course of the previous novel, from his early "frisky" rapport with J. Edgar Hoover (their phone calls are one of my favorite parts of the book) to him noting that his "best friend" gave him the scars on his face (not Kemper Boyd--RIP, favorite part of American Tabloid--but Pete Bondurant, the only real connection he has left, the man who once hated him so much he had to reluctantly settle for almost killing him rather than going all the way).

"We all went to school on Jack," Agent Dwight Holly observes at one point, and it's both a great line and an encapsulation of the problem with The Cold Six Thousand, which is that two-thirds of it are all the aftermath of Jack Kennedy's administration.

Nevertheless, this book has its own difficult charms. There may not be a better literary exploration of hatred around, and Ellroy's illumination of how hate underlines and supports so much of American political life is both awe-inspiring and unfortunately believable. It's not just Wayne going deeper and deeper into his newfound race hatred, it's also "hate smart," the KKK busts that target mail-fraud and let castrations slide, Chuck Rogers and his parents, Janice Tedrow and her cramps, the fake letter that goes out to MLK, and Hoover's rabid froth. It's hard to read, but it's also powerful, and equally powerful are the sections where Ellroy matter-of-factly shows that it's not even always hate: Vietnamese slaves work to process heroin for the CIA and the CIA lets them sell it, provided they're not selling it to whites, and the racism that keeps it all functioning isn't hate but sheer indifference and dehumanization. (It's also a lie, which is another Ellroy throughline: you can't escape or contain corruption. The dope gets out, and the pipeline for the money is leaky, too. Beautiful, loved-by-all Barb snorts heroin to try to deal with her husband's role in a war and business she hates; the CIA funds Castro instead of the Cuban resistance and siphons off money for luxury goods, too. Pete gets stunned by all of it, but you can't do evil and expect to control its consequences.)

So there you go: The Cold Six Thousand is a novel that's brilliant about some very ugly things, and that's brilliant about them in an ugly way. It's at its best when its plot is moving and its characters are acting ways that reveal the novel's themes, which unfortunately doesn't happen as much as it should. When it clicks, though, it makes for one of those spit-teeth-on-the-floor Ellroy-trademarked knockout punches.

On to Blood's a Rover.

(Bonus: I forgot to add a link to the Chuck Rogers episode of the excellent podcast Criminal.)

Well I finally got around to reading this and what a blast. Great how the forward starts out talking about how people romanticise a golden era that never was and then *bang* it takes you right into this dark, amoral underbelly of America. Gratuitous violence, corruption, blackmail, all delivered with some snappy one liners - sounds like a an episode of The Sopranos, except it makes that lot look positively moral. Oh, and enough conspiracy theory to bring Fox Mulder out of retirement.

10/2 reread review - 4/5

Had the opportunity to listen to the full text narrated by Craig Wesson and it was a treat. It doesn't fundamentally change my opinion about the book, but you always catch new things with a reread, and being able to hear the excellent narration only enhanced the atmosphere. What's good is still good, and what drags still drags (Vietnam, unneeded!).

It's still the dog at his most frazzled, fried and frappéd, but when it lands, it lands goooooooood.



Original review

Masterpieces are difficult to top, but there's always elements that will survive .

Ellroy's second book in the Underworld trilogy loses steam, but instead gives us an incredibly vivid portrait of corruption, racism, and how petty grudges can turn the tide of History.

Starting in Dallas hours after JFK's ventilation, The Cold Six Thousand clocks a steady course throughout the middle period of the 1960s and ends with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy.

Dig, Ellroy really making good on his desire to show that the corruption spreads out from more than just LA. We get Mormon Mafia intrigue with Howard Hughes in Vegas, CIA heroin operations in Laos and even a couple revenge raids into Cuba for good measure

Dig, Freddy Otash being a fairly major character who is directly responsible for the events of 1968.

Dig, Pete B and his arc. The man deserved his ending.

Don't dig, the pacing. The book is just shy of 700 pages and could have frankly used a bit of an edit to remove maybe a hundred or so of them. It's all very moody, well-written and enjoyable, but there comes a point where we need to stop worrying about what's happening with random racists caught on FBI wire tap and get back to the main plot and conspiracy.

That would be my main complaint of the book as well. It just needed to dial in a little bit more and give us a little bit more of a focused picture instead of the grander one it delivered.

Quite frankly, the entire Vietnam sub plot probably could have been dropped. It feels like there had to be a Vietnam thread since the book takes place over the worst years of the war.

Elroy also tightened the language back up to LA Confidential levels. Makes sense, since he has a lot of ground to cover over the 5 years the book takes place. I really enjoyed how American Tabloid found the perfect balance between brevity and detail, and was disappointed that he leashed it back up for this one. I was able to get used to it by page 40 or so, but those first couple chapters were learning experience.

However, when it hits, it hits. The nuggets of the conspiracy that are teased out, the pain of seeing the novels antagonists plan out what they are doing while the main characters can only stumble into the traps they make. It's very tense at times and Ellroy is still a master of tone and language. There is a lot to read, but at no point does the quality dip.

Overall, it's not nearly as good as American tabloid, but considering American tabloid is probably the man's best work, it's understandable that it falls short. Definitely worth reading, just don't mind the ponderous pacing and let yourself get fully immersed in the mood of the 1960s underbelly.

superata la possibilità abbandono

E' dura questa quasi prima esperienza nel genere, immediatamente chiara è solo la collocazione spazio-temporale iniziale: Dallas, 22 novembre 1963. Ho già letto e riletto alcune decine di pagine che ora sono segnate a margine, sottolineate e già sciupate e inizio a capire che forse le figure principali, a parte i morti, sono Wayne Tedrow, Ward Littell e Pete Bondurant ma anche le loro (o non proprio loro) donne lo sono, forse, e inizio anche a capire che qui la normalità è essere sporchi, corrotti, ladri, mafiosi, assassini, drogati, spacciatori, papponi, puttane (uomini e donne) di professione o d'animo, mercenari, doppiogiochisti, ammazzati, insomma poliziotti, politici, consiglieri, 'bracci destri', imprenditori.
E' il complotto, è l'altro livello della realtà, quello che l'uomo comune può fingere di ignorare o credere che non sia così diffuso mentre anche lui sta arraffando. E' un alternarsi di dati storici e di finzione, e l'insieme è molto credibile. Pagine e pagine scritte come fossero promemoria o appunti presi a fine giornata sull'agenda di casa, frasi spezzettate, continui rimandi, eppure tutto torna, gli incastri funzionano

Scrittura illeggibili, periodi che danno il nervoso

I tried, God knows I tried. No seriously, I worked hard for this book. I was confused about what the hell was happening, so first I read a couple of critics reviews, just to confirm that I wasn't the only one struggling. I then read through the character list and plot summary of American Tabloid (it's been about five years), just to make sense of who was who. And then, at the end of each chapter, I stopped to reflect to make sure I had actually taken in what I had just read. But, I couldn't tolerate it. I just couldn't see the point.

Reasons not to read The Cold Six Thousand:
1) I'm sick of Elroy's staccato writing style. It was snappy and edgy in American Tabloid, but it just felt clinical and disinterested here.
2) I struggled with the lack of insight into characters' motivations. We knew all about actions, but almost never about WHY characters acted.
3) After reading My Dark Places, and about The Hilicker Curse, I'm generally a bit grossed out by James Elroy and his perversions.
4) I'm not terribly down with the specifics of 1960s American history, and so prefer not to have my learning of it coloured by right-wing conspiracies and fictionalised characters
5) Lastly, normally, the desire to know what happens would be a strong driver to motivate me to finish a book I'm not loving. However, as this one is based in some incredibly well-known history, I already know what happens!

Permission to abandon granted!

Still good, but not as good as the opener of this trilogy "American Tabloid" (a must-read for crime fiction enthusiasts). Among one of the most racism-based books I have ever read, "The Cold Six Thousand" pulls no punches in showing the hatred White America had for the Outsider (whether it be African-Americans, Viet Cong, and Communists). It is written in short, quick pace that Ellroy said was specific to this book alone due to its storyline being set through the mid-60s. This format does make the book a bit more confusing. Sometimes I got lost between sentences due to repetitions or vague character actions. It is a "hip" book and does flow with the overall message, but even through this format it was a slower read than "American Tabloid" which had a similar yet slightly more descriptive form. The violence in this one is more shocking as it is all hate-based. Everyone is crooked and has a secret to hide (which is described as a prologue to "American Tabloid") and the worst of them are the higher ups (mainly J. Edgar Hoover and the Organized Crime Outfit run by Sam Giancana). Real characters mix with the fictional, with special attention to Hoover, Howard Hughes, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. which continues the conspiracy aspect explored in the first one and spices up the plot. Once again, the "three character" theme is used, with Pete Bondurant and Ward Littell returning. Instead of Cuba and Miami as central storyline areas, Las Vegas and Vietnam are now emphasized and a good chunk of time is spent there. The Civil Rights Movement and the RFK election provide a backdrop to the racist themes explored in America with the FBI, CIA and Mafia all playing a part in the puzzle. Not a bad book, but not as worthy as "American Tabloid." It does make me look forward to reading "Blood's a Rover," the concluding chapter in Ellroy's Underworld USA.

One of the book's strongest points is the long-range storyline involving the third character perspective, that of Wayne Tedrow Jr. His plotline is a solid gritty mystery storyline. A Las Vegas PD detective who receives a contract and $6,000 (the titular "cold six thousand") to kill a Black pimp who stabbed a blackjack dealer in Vegas sets up the better part of the story, as it runs through the entire book. Wayne does get involved in Ward's and Pete's business and both characters do mesh with Wayne's main plotline as well. It works as both mystery novel and conspiracy novel alike and does keep the book burning at a fast rate. Tedrow also has the best character study in the novel, much like Kemper Boyd in "American Tabloid" he goes through a range ideas and actions that prove to have very rash consequences. However, most of what he must go through is beyond his control, as his cold six thousand was more a commission than a choice.

Despite my praise of "American Tabloid" over this one I find it a worthy sequel.

In all fairness, I should confess that I only made it 100 pages in. But I pretty much never stop reading a book unless I'm really pretty miserable. In my opinion, Ellroy took his sparse, slang-soaked writing style a bit too far in this one. with the exception of the FBI "reports", there are no sentences longer than 6 words in the first 100 pages. I felt like the book was shooting the story at me with a semi-automatic weapon. I was able to adjust to his style in American Tabloid, but perhaps it wasn't quite so, well, SO? Or maybe I could better handle it then. But this time, no can do.

America....America.....land of milk and honey. Forget about Cuba. That's old news. It's Vietnam baby. It's Saigon, Laos, poppy fields, heroin, Vietcong. Viva la causa. Drugs fund the cause. The cause drives The Outfit. The Outfit funds Vegas. Vegas makes millions. It's not enough. Cuba wasn't enough. Vietnam isn't enough. They want to move into Latin America. The CIA sees potential. The CIA fears communism. The CIA fears Ho Chi Minh.

Bobby Kennedy sits quietly in the background. He hasn't forgotten what The Outfit did to Jack. Martin Luther King continues to emerge. The south is furious. The south is Klan land. The Klan runs guns and hate. The Klan runs white supremacy. The Klan runs a buffer for the FBI to control King and the civil rights movement. The Klan has powerful friends. Hoover moves his pieces around. Hoover is a sadist. Hoover won't be usurped. Hoover hates King. Hoover hates Bobby Kennedy.

The Cold Six Thousand is an all-star cast. Sonny Liston sells muscle to the mob. Sal Mineo is prime blackmail material. Bobby Kennedy waits patiently for redemption. Martin Luther King is almost untouchable rising above Hoover's dirty games. Sirhan Sirhan is a deranged track hound and an alcoholic. James Earl Ray is hooked on meth and white supremacy.
This is America. This is The Life.

The Cold Six Thousand picks up from where American Tabloid left off: immediately following John F. Kennedy's assassination. The broad sweep of history continues through the book - Cuba, Castro, MLK, RFK, Howard Hughes in Vegas, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover and any number of Hollywood figures - are dissected and dramatised. The book takes us from JFK to RFK on one long death trip - with plenty of scalps on the way.

As ever, research and descriptiveness is vibrant and larger-than-life. There's a combination of staccato jive and verisimilitude which evokes a real sense of place. But this instalment contrasts Big History with smaller stories. Fathers and sons. Hitmen and victims. And love stories - whether they're between showgirls and killers, lawyers and Kennedys or Hoover and chaos. It seems altogether more nuanced than American Tabloid, and the little touches serve to flesh the experience out fully.

Ellroy's gift with this book - aside from the recreation of era, which is standard in his works - is that he presents truly despicable people in such a way that you can't help but love them. There's a sense the author has real affection for his characters - the racist Klan fucks, the mannered, deadly Hoover... they're the result of so much work you can feel the writer's pride in his creation.

For me, this shone through with the figure of Pete Bondurant: he is one cold motherfucker. He does terrible things. He exercises a freakish will - killing, maiming, torturing - but you can't help but like him. There's an element of "yay, bad guy!" at play but it's offset by how bad enjoying his head-kickings makes you feel. Conflicted doesn't begin to cover it.

The book is definitely hard going at times. Not that it's difficult to read - if powers along - but it's a cruel work, much more cruel than American Tabloid, the first in the trilogy. There's a rapaciousness at work that's insidious and almost all-encompassing. It's a real world of shit, of dark deals and cabals within cabals. It's dirty, wet work. In The Hilliker Curse Ellroy mentions how his disintegrating relationship (and mental state) contributed to the obnoxious tone of parts of the work.

But stick around for the ending. It rockets along with a mix of historical death, relationship breakdown and some of the most satisfying revenge you'll find. The cruelty pays dividends boocoo.