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Loading... Cold Six Thousand, The (original 2001; edition 2001)by James Ellroy (Author)
Work InformationThe Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy (2001)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. “Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.” Firstly I should point out that this book is the sequel of "American Tabloid" regarded by many as the basis to the cult movie Pulp Fiction.However, as I can attest, it can be read as a stand alone. ''The Cold Six Thousand,'' depicts an American political underbelly teeming with conspiracy and crime as seen through the eyes of three mid-level operatives: Ward Littell, an F.B.I. agent turned mob lawyer; Pete Bondurant, a hired killer and racket operator; and Wayne Tedrow Jr., a Las Vegas policeman and son of a crooked union leader cum casino owner in the city. The novel begins a few minutes after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and follows its characters as they become embroiled with the burgeoning civil rights movement, the Las Vegas gambling industry and the Vietnamese opium trade, and ends with the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The F.B.I., the Ku Klux Klan, the C.I.A., Cuban political expatriates, J.Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes to name but a few also make an appearance and at some time or other the three main characters will end up working for or with each of these entities -- sometimes several of them at once. This novel will not teach anybody anything new about any of the events that take place throughout, instead it leans very heavily on the side of the conspiracy theories of the time. It is richly peppered with scenes of violence although this rarely if ever gets gratuitous and plenty of what is no doubt regarded as gangster slang of the time. Many of the sentences are only two or three words long and many are repeated tabloid style yet my copy of this novel is nearly 700 pages long so is a pretty hefty tome. Now to me the length rather than being it's strength is it's weakness. The tale is just too far reaching and I must admit that on more than one occasion I was tempted to throw in the towel with it however, I did soldier on and complete it. Personally I would have preferred Ellroy concentrated on one historical event rather than so many. Nor did I really find the three main characters with their somewhat convoluted and entwined alliances that convincing, this was particularly true of that of Ward Littell. In the end I felt that it was OK but reads like the author's pet hobby-horse rather than a true work of fiction IMHO and ultimately was left frustrated instead of enlightened by it. This is the second book of Underworld USA . It begins with the turmoil in Dallas after JFK's assassination and ends with the assassination of RFK. Ellroy shows relentlessly the corruption within the regims up to the highest places, the mafiose participations of different groups, Vietnam with all the dark machinations and acting with heroin as well as the rise and fall of Martin Luther King. Money and envy rule the world. Many of the protagonists from the first book of this trilogy have their fingers in the book. I will probably meet some of them in the third volume while others are dead. Ellroy has a very special writing style. Sometimes it is like a telegram to read, then again as fluid as a thriller. In any case, it is very exciting and entertaining. Did not disappoint after American Tabloid. The writing style is distinctly odd, there's a rhythm that you have to fall into and when you do it's almost like poetry. Once again, I think Ellroy is pretty close to the truth here. If you're into crime fiction, conspiracy theories and American history, this series covers all the bases.
Distinctions
In this savagely audacious novel, James Ellroy""plants a pipe bomb under the America in the 1960s, lights the fuse, and watches the shrapnel fly. On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their job: to clean up the JFK hit's loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop with family ties to the lunatic right; Ward J. Littell, a defrocked FBI man turned underworld mouthpiece; and Pete Bondurant, a dope-runner and hit-man who serves as the mob's emissary to the anti-Castro underground. It goes bad from there. For the next five years these night-riders run a whirlwind of plots and counter-plots: Howard Hughes's takeover of Vegas, J. Edgar Hoover's war against the civil rights movement, the heroin trade in Vietnam, and the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Wilder than "L. A. Confidential, "more devastating than "American Tabloid, "The Cold Six Thousand establishes Ellroy as one of our most fearless novelists. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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All in all, the book is a very long linguistic nightmare.