Finished this over the weekend and I was not disappointed as
the sales assistant in Murder One thought I might be.
Yes it is not as good as American Tabloid. Yes, Ellroy
probably overreaches himself this time, but it is still an
epic indictment of the US merging of the Underworld, Big
Business and Presidential Politics.
As for the much talked about machine-gun sentence structure,
I can't say it bothered me any more than Henry James'
overlong sentences do. It is a perfectly acceptable stylistic
choice on the part of the author and one which does not
interfere with the work. In many ways it creates a vital
urgency and succeeds as the bastard child of Virginia Woolf's
stream of consciousness. There, now I feel a bit like the
idiot critic who praised The Beatles for their "aeolian
cadences". All in all, a bloody good read and a fun
revisiting of all those goofy guys you met and loved in Am
Tab as well as introducing a few new guys and dragging them
through kicking through a meat grinder.
Daniel Sevitt
danielse@amdocs.com
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