I was glad when it picked up the story right after the Kennedy assassination because I had just read American Tabloid, but the twists and turns and convoluted story lines got tiresome and even though I knew we would end up at the Martin Luther King and RFK assassinations, my interest flagged.

-Muy Ellroy, pero mucho. Así que ya saben lo malo y lo muy bueno que les espera.-

Género. Novela.

Lo que nos cuenta. En el libro Seis de los grandes (publicación original: The Cold Six Thousand, 2001), Wayne Tedrow Junior aterriza en Dallas minutos después del asesinato del presidente J. F. Kennedy. Wayne fue soldado y ahora es policía en Las Vegas, y llega a la ciudad con el encargo de matar, por seis mil dólares, a un proxeneta negro que ha molestado al clan de los casinos. En Dallas contará con la ayuda de Maynard D. Moore, policía de la ciudad, relacionado con alguna de las víctimas colaterales del magnicidio. Casi a la vez aterriza en la misma ciudad Ward Littel, un antiguo agente del FBI, pero que mantiene lazos indirectos y férreos con la agencia, que ahora trabaja para la mafia aunque sigue los dictados de J. Edgar Hoover y, en esta ocasión, debe asegurar que toda la investigación sobre la muerte de Kennedy apunte a Lee Harvey Oswald. En la ciudad también está Pete Bondurant, operativo que igual trabaja para la CIA que para la mafia. Segundo libro de la trilogía America oculta pero que se puede leer de forma independiente.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

Απιστευτο!επικο ιστορικο ταξιδι στο αμερικανικο παρακρατος

The first book in this Underworld series, 'American Tabloid', is a conspiracy theorist's wet-dream, and, arguably, an American Canon literary classic. However, 'The Cold Six Thousand', the second in the series, fell considerably short of my expectations, sort of a low-rent charmless Pulp Fiction movie.

The clipped sentences, which are like notes from some journalist's war diary, and the surviving characters from the first book, continue to tell all about the supposedly linked assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. If you have read the first book, and gentle reader, you should if you want to understand the convoluted twists and devious machinations which are knit into the followup plots and relationships, the sequel is a tale of much  confounding brutal comeuppances for our monster ne'er-do-wells, who are unraveling from whatever higher purpose these maniacs meant their actions to reflect. Meth and alcohol, anti-Castro and pro-Castro gun-running, Las Vegas Mob manipulations, CIA and FBI turf scuffles combined with the ramping up of the lucrative heroin production in Vietnam despite the ongoing war there turn motives inside out and upside down.

The killing of Martin Luther King simply did not compute in this swirling mess of imagined conspiracies. I simply could not buy James Ellroy's contrived set up for it. I also had a problem with the emotional distress Pete Bondurant felt over his discovery that his drug empire partners were feeding American GIs their heroin fixes in Vietnam. I cannot think in what universe that the kind of man Pete is would lead him to either be blind to the fact that soldier excesses bleed over to drug and alcohol cravings (he himself is an example!) or not suspecting that the Mob guys, whether supporting the killing of Castro-the Kennedys-King or not, that these same mob guys who had amply demonstrated an attitude of hedging every bet and gamble, would not be also plotting to get rid of or twist about whoever and whatever became less useful to them in their Number One pursuit of dirty money.

Perhaps these contrivances are harder for me to swallow because I actually lived my life through these turbulent decades.

There's something about the JFK assassination that lends itself to a sort of dark American fairy tale. The infinite conspiracy theories. The convergance of gangsters, spies, and Hollywood. The very American concept of a total nobody being able to take out the most powerful man in the world. "American Tabloid"--which this book is a direct sequel to--felt a little like an ultraviolent take on "National Treasure", with three unbelievably evil men taking on the horrific, depraved caper of the century. But what happens when it's over?
"The Cold Six Thousand" is BLEAK. The same "everybody loses" attitude as its predecessor, but the lofty, high-concept scheme in this one is fighting against the civil rights movement. An unrelenting stream of awful choices, despicable characters, and brutal violence. Without JFK tying them together, the sprawling cast is all spun off in their own deranged worlds, doing unthinkable things just to stay alive. Tragedy on a national scale. Heroin, Las Vegas, the KKK: THIS is America, where a man would do anything for six thousand dollars.

Review to follow shortly.

Reads like a volcanic eruption of pent-up, noxious fumes forced underground by your high school history class' neat and tidy portrayal of the sixties. Rolls around in way too much bigotry, of every flavor, to be wholly enjoyable. But I found it impossible to look away or stop reading. Would give it more stars if it hadn't left me feeling the need to shower.

This book is the worst car crash you've ever heard of, unfolding in excruciating slow motion. The characters are monsters. The action starts at the Kennedy assassination and ends at one of the other assassinations of the 60's, Bobby I think. I winced my way through this book and at the end I wondered why I had stuck with it. I have never been so horrified and repulsed by characters in fiction. But the writing has a force and brutal brevity that I found fascinating. I may read more Ellroy in the future, but I'd need to cut it with some nice soothing "Tuesdays with Morrie" afterward.

James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, is as difficult to read and as insightful as a transcript of a Trump rally. Is it possible that an author, who has spent perhaps years in agonizing research, might resent his readers breezing through his/her novel from EWR to LAX and retaliate by writing the next novel with such antagonistic brutal staccato sentences and sentence fragments, and with more than sufficient gangster patois, and with so many twists of motivations and puzzling consequences, so as to make his reader grind teeth and spit invectives in search of some vague clarity of meaning? An exception are the epistolary inserts, mostly fictional (one assumes) FBI documents which are clearly written and either expositions or transcriptions of conversations or illegal surveillances.
All in all, the book is a very long linguistic nightmare.

Not quite halfway done with this, but I just can't bring myself to finish. I read all of Ellroy's L.A. Quartet (with The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential standing out as wonderful works). I read American Tabloid all the way through and, though I didn't love it, found it impossible to put down. This book suffers from too much for me to continue further. The three-to-five word sentences are assaultive and hardly informative after awhile. The action is more of the same from American Tabloid, and the characters don't have that grey love-hate quality; Mostly I just hate them. The bleakness and violence start to overwhelm after a while. So yeah, I get it. People are going to get rich, and RFK/MLK are going to die. The JFK conspiracy in American Tabloid was so much more interesting.

This is the 2nd book in a planned 3 part series that began with American Tabloid. 6K picks up exactly where AT began (late November, 1963 in Dallas).

The only difference between books is that Ellroy seems to have run out of innovative plot and moved to a machine gun form of storytelling. 7 out of 10 sentences are no longer than 3 words a piece. Many are shorter. or Most. Are. Shorter.

The main characters of Ward Littell, Pete B and Wayne Jr. Hoover is back for more as is Hughes, who Ellroy hysterically portrays. MLK and RFK find there way into the novel as well.

I would recommend this book to anyone who liked American Tabloid, but if you don't find yourself enjoying it to the same extent as AT, don't sweat it and put it down.

A Masterpiece.