RARA-AVIS: re: Ellroy's Contino

keith logan (logankeith@hotmail.com)
Wed, 06 May 1998 05:49:20 PDT novella with its literary conceit that all events therein are true,
Ellroy has composed a swell tribute to B flicks and crazy noir stories.
I like the circular (spiral?) narrative pattern, beginning at the end
and ending at the beginning. A great tale filled with just about
everything: crooked cops, fast cars, lots of women (loose and
otherwise), gunplay, LA gangsters, red fear, and personal epiphany....

I do think that the staccato style of writing is more than just style,
more than an effort to seem different. It's a great device allowing
Ellroy to control the pacing, slow it down or speed it up (and boy can
it get crazy-fast!). I like the way it forces the reader to work a bit
harder the usual, to fill in gaps with details imagined out of whole
cloth; I'd bet we all came up with very different images of people and
places from this story. More than the usual variety, I mean, since so
much is left to the reader.

Down-side: the ending just happens too quickly. And that plot made _The
Big Sleep_ look like a drive down a dead-straight desert highway! The
idea that the woman married to an FBI guy would (a) be hanging around
Contino seems out of place and (b) why didn't she get her husband and
the FBI in on things? But the ride is well worth these misgivings.

Keith Logan logankeith@hotmail.com

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