In spinning the threads of post-JFK-assassination cultural chaos, James Ellroy's whirlwind riff on the 1960s takes nothing for granted, except that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Seuss who's hungrier for violence than for green eggs and ham.

With its hypnotic, staccato rhythms, and words jostling, bumping, marching forward with edgy intensity (like lemmings heading toward a cliff of their own devising), The Cold Six Thousand feels as if it's being narrated by a hopped-up Dr. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. His story is ground zero in Ellroy's stunning vision: historical confluence as American Nightmare. Tedrow stands witness, as the icons of an iconic era mingle with cops, killers, hoods, and provocateurs. Edgar Hoover, shipping out to Vietnam and returning home, the bearer of white powder, plotting new deaths as 1968 approaches. He's got $6,000 in cash and no idea that he is about to plunge into the cover-up conspiracy already brewing around Kennedy's assassination, no idea that this will mark the beginning of a hellish five-year ride through the private underbelly of public policy.Įllroy's furiously paced narrative tracks Tedrow's ride: Dallas back to Vegas, with the Mob and Howard Hughes, south with the Klan and J. Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop, arrives with a loathsome job to do. The heart of the American Dream detonated. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speedball through our most tumultuous time. Now, in The Cold Six Thousand, his most ambitious and explosive novel yet, he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. James Ellroy's high-velocity, best-selling novels have redefined noir for our age, propelling us within inches of the dark realities of America's recent history. Confidential, White Jazz, American Tabloid.

The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy