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L.A. Confidential
by: James Ellroy |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780446674249 Edition: later printing ISBN: 0446674249 Label: Grand Central Publishing Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 512 Publication Date: September 01, 1997 Publisher: Grand Central Publishing Studio: Grand Central Publishing Features:
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| Customer Reviews | ||
  - Another Major Ellroy WorkThis is another major novel by one of America's great -- though slightly unsung -- writers. Rating: - There's nothing secret about this one, its just a great book.This is a great book. Really, great. Why? It offers insight into basic human motivations suck as greed, lust, and the desire for fame. These base motivations drive the characters forward into a place where they become complex and interesting. The book also offers a good story and great plot. The only problem with Ellory might be, and this is only to say might be, the fact that too much of whats involved in the story all seems to run together, but fair too easily. Other than that, the book is one the best ones I have read. Get it and enjoy. Rating:  - Gritty, Haunting, And Way Over The TopThe movie version of "L.A. Confidential" was a show I never wanted to end. The novel was another matter. James Ellroy's Los Angeles is a depraved sinkhole of villainy and vice, where a cop's idea of bracing a suspect is breaking his skull or mangling his hand. Women trade on male weakness for easy money. Everyone is ultimately corrupt. "You want to know what the big lie is? You and your precious absolute justice!" a rape victim tells her avenger before stabbing him in the back. If you are into that sort of thing, I can't imagine a better Charon for your journey to the underworld than Ellroy. His prose style tends to the dense and hyperbolic, but he's never dull. His ear for characters is magnificent, and he relates matters quickly with a minimum of detail and a jazzy blend of racial invective, profanity, and slang that makes you feel you are one of the damned circa the 1950s, riding a buzz of bennies and Charlie Parker to who knows where. There's even glimpses of humor. One actor who performs as a kind of ersatz Mickey Mouse shakes off a sordid story with a half-bored shrug: "Jack, I'm tres Hollywood. I dress up as a rodent to entertain children. Nothing in this town surprises me." Problem is, Ellroy doesn't make me care for one darn minute. Maybe I'm spoiled from the movie, which boils down the story into a straightforward whodunit without sidetracking me into a gruesome set of serial killings or a death-porn angle like the book does, tying them all together unconvincingly at the end. Maybe I needed to read the two prequel novels in Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet" series to understand the backstory better. But oftentimes, I felt Ellroy's predilection for macho posturing and morbid detail getting in the way of a story that only springs to life in bursts here and there, however tightly it is presented in the overall. Fans of the film will be happy to know many of the brilliant characters from that exist here, too, in deeper and sometimes more compelling form. Brutal policeman Bud White, played in the film by Russell Crowe, is even more unhinged in the book, though you understand if not sympathize with his fury. His antithesis and archenemy, Sgt. Ed Exley, Guy Pearce in the film, has a deeper backstory involving phony war hero status and an over-privileged background he rebels against. Like other reviewers here note, Exley is the central character if anyone is, and with the plot running in 40 different directions, you appreciate his centering effect on the narrative. "L.A. Confidential" is described by other reviewers as hard to put down. I can't agree, because I did put it down often, and paid a price when returning to find a minor plot point suddenly in the foreground of the story. Ellroy shifts around like that because he's a meticulous plotter, even when his overall story is less than full-baked. I am not as meticulous a reader, and paid a price. But something about the way Ellroy wrote kept me from engaging the novel more closely. He's worth reading, just a mite cold in his view of life and prone to mess. Rating: - Nihilistic, Brutal Descent into LA's Vice Abattior"LA Confidential" is not a novel to be read so much as it is a novel to be re-read, possibly 3 or more times. At nearly 500 pages, yes, that's asking a lot of a reader, but Ellroy and "LA Confidential" are well worth the stretch. But be warned--Ellroy never hesitates to shock with the vilest and most depraved extremes of human depravity and evil. "LA Confidential" unflinchingly serves up an intoxicating broth of '50's style, hairy-armpit men's sweat-magazine action, highly complex plotting, sick SICK crime intrigue along with historical based "faction" inspired by the LA police dept's long and sordid history of corruption. Fans of the 1997 movie should DEFINITELY make the effort to experience the source material here. Brian Helgeland (who won an Oscar for his screenplay) did an outstanding job adapting Ellroy's novel, and I agree captured the spirit and essence of the novel. BUT so MUCH had to be left out to make a 2 hour movie. I would say 60% of the novel got left "on the cutting room floor" to adapt for screen. This is reason enough I think for movie fans to take a run at the novel, not only to see everything the movie had to miss, but also, to appreciate what a complex yarn Ellroy spun here AND certainly the bang-up adaptation Helgeland squeezed out of it. It is the understatement of the year to just say James Ellroy is cynical in extremis about humanity in general. "LA Confidential" has got to be absolutely as hard-bitten as crime fiction can get, and it seems like good is only done incidentally. Once every corrupt and predatory angle is played, some benefit is reaped by innocents only after these feral human pit-bulls tear each other to shreds. Maybe one gunsel or bent cop will find a whisper of a conscience during a lull in the bloodshed and double-dealing and provide readers with some backhanded facsimile of a happy ending. So what's the appeal, then? Partly it's just the lurid shock of vicariously experiencing Ellroy's eternal midnight of California damnation. But let's give him awestruck credit for his tough, relentless, flint-edged plotting and dialogue that keeps you up way later than you should every night, to read just "one more chapter". I should also add that the blood and guts carnage is also heavily salted with wicked, biting humor to counterbalance the crime squalor AND further amaze you with Ellroy's prowess. If you have the stomach for crime noir this hard edged, I have never read anyone who does it better than Ellroy does. I concede I may not be the sharpest crayola in the box, but as indicated in my opener, "LA Confidential" is SO dense and multilayered, with an unforgivingly huge cast of characters, that it is very easy to get lost or confused. All the better to read it again--and again--and grow into full appreciation of the elaborate elegance of the plot and to better appreciate the artistry--yes--of Ellroy's writing. It certainly helped me to have seen the movie first so I could picture the actors' faces while reading of them in the novel. But I am confident the novel packs no less of a punch even if you haven't seen the movie. Once "LA Confidential" hooks you, step up to The Black Dahlia for more fact-based and equally grisly LA crime horror, then see Ellroy really soar with American Tabloid: A Novel, then sequel The Cold Six Thousand: A Novel, where his parallel universe of gang crime and political corruption goes national, fictionalizing the Bay of Pigs, JFK assassination, Howard Hughes' lunatic Las Vegas days, the nefarious J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Kennedy, MLK, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, & much, much more. Only time will tell whether Ellroy gets recognized as a literary worthy like Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson got to be. Whether he does or not may not be settled in our lifetimes, but that should certainly not inhibit our enjoyment of Ellroy's brass-knuckled work today. If you won't get squeamish when the going gets rough, "LA Confidential" is your ticket to some top shelf crime mystery. Best enjoyed while sipping cheap bourbon on the rocks (cigarettes optional, but definitely era-appropriate). Rating: - Rewarding in the ExtremeThis third in James Ellroy's LA Quartet series of LAPD novels is an ambitious, profound and highly entertaining exploration of post-war Los Angeles power and corruption. The shotgun-blast writing style is initially disconcerting (I was going whaaaa???? for the first several pages), but once you get into Ellroy's rhythm, you'll be fine. He's one of the most original stylists writing today, and here his approach ideally suits the material. The three main characters, ambitious rich boy Ed Exley, showboat cop Jack Vincennes, and brutal, tender Bud White, are all richly drawn, deeply flawed, and fully human. The many supporting characters, some actual historical figures, some inspired by historical figures and some fictional, are fascinating and fill appropriate places in the complex narrative. You must read closely and read all the way through as there are many interweaving plots and themes: police corruption, tabloid journalism, a prostitution ring, pornography, drugs, organized crime, plastic surgery, and seriously twisted skeletons in the closet of an animator/amusement park developer inspired by Walt Disney. If your mind is only half-focused, or you stop part way through and pick up the book several days or weeks later, you'll be lost. Others differ, but for me, this is the best of the quartet and works just fine as a stand-alone. There's high drama, plenty of humor, lots of fun guessing who the real-life models for some of the characters might be--I've enjoyed Googling the character names to learn more about the real-life figures--and brutal, hard-won redemption. Curtis Hanson's film adaption is of necessity boiled down--the movie is plenty complex with most of the novel's subplots removed--but brilliantly done. Still, read the book for the full story. You won't be sorry. |
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