Ellroy marks time between installments of his outsized LA saga with a slender collection of crime fiction — a novella and five stories (1986-94) — all reeking of his trademark corruption and stylistic flamboyance. Readers impatient with Ellroy's indulgently telegraphic prose in L.A. Confidential (1990) and White Jazz (1992) may be surprised to find that the most recent (and excessive) of these stories, the substantial "Dick Contino's Blues," is the strongest. Its honky-tonk accordionist hero, introduced in a could-be-factual prologue, "Out of the Past," tries to boost his stalled movie career by arranging to have himself and starlet Chrissy Staples kidnapped — then watches the hoax spin dangerously out of control when waves of hoods, capped by the fearsome Whipcord Strangler, muscle in on the action, making for a scary, funny, bluesy climax. The other stories, as you'd expect, are all content with a narrower range of effects. In the routine crime story "High Darktown," Sgt. Lee Blanchard goes after a pair of liquor store thieves just out of prison and hot for his scalp. Blanchard's back in the offbeat "Dial Axminster 6-400," paired with Davis Evans, a hard-nosed cop who goes after a trio of violent kidnappers in the hope of repossessing their two-tone 1936 Auburn speedster. "Since I Don't Have You" asks why Gretchen Shoftel, a cozy friend of both mobster Mickey Cohen and billionaire Howard Hughes, was still working as a carhop just before she took off for parts unknown. In the foolishly likeable "Gravy Train," Stan Klein works his way up from hard time to acting as minder for Basko, a dog who's just inherited $25 million. And "Torch Number," the weakest and most sentimental of the batch, shows shamus Spade Hearns pursuing a torch singer who's gotten hold of a song his old love wrote and performed just for him. Nothing here like the power of Elroy's LA quartet; but all the stories are effective as genre pieces, and most of them equally interesting for their manic ambivalence toward postwar California.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0307278794
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping.
An investigation into an 11-year-old murder unearths some surprising revelations in Inspector Ian Rutledge’s 21st case (The Gate Keeper, 2018, etc.).
Rutledge survived World War I shellshocked and living with the ghostly voice of Hamish, a comrade who died in his arms. When he helps a former soldier find his wife, the grateful man gives him a tip that might help Rutledge find one of the most wanted men in Britain, Alan Barrington, who was accused of murder over a decade earlier and hasn't been seen since. Rutledge's boss gives him the unwelcome job of following up the clue, which begins the inspector's unrelenting search for the truth. Barrington had been accused of engineering a motor crash that killed Blanche Thorne and gravely injured her second husband, Harold Fletcher-Munro. Barrington had been positive that Fletcher-Munro drove Barrington’s friend Mark Thorne to financial ruin and suicide so he could marry Blanche. Rutledge starts out by investigating Barrington’s friends, including his lawyer and estate agent, both of whom have known him for years. When each refuses to confirm or deny that he’s still alive, Rutledge begins to consider the possibility that Mark Thorne did not commit suicide but was murdered by one of the several men who wanted Blanche. Conversations with friends and relatives of the parties involved with Blanche reveal many conflicting opinions. Each snippet Rutledge gleans leads him deeper into a complex maze, but he never considers giving up even when his own wartime demons come to the fore.
Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-267874-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
As in summer movies, a triple dose of violence conceals the absence of real menace when neither victims nor avengers stir...
Dr. Alex Cross has left Metro DC Homicide for the FBI, but it’s business as usual in this laughably rough-hewn fairy tale of modern-day white slavery.
According to reliable sources, more people are being sold into slavery than ever before, and it all seems to be going down on the FBI’s watch. Atlanta ex-reporter Elizabeth Connolly, who looks just like Claudia Schiffer, is the ninth target over the past two years to be abducted by a husband-and-wife pair who travel the country at the behest of the nefarious Pasha Sorokin, the Wolf of the Red Mafiya. The only clues are those deliberately left behind by the kidnappers, who snatch fashion designer Audrey Meek from the King of Prussia Mall in full view of her children, or patrons like Audrey’s purchaser, who ends up releasing her and killing himself. Who you gonna call? Alex Cross, of course. Even though he still hasn’t finished the Agency’s training course, all the higher-ups he runs into, from hardcases who trust him to lickspittles seething with envy, have obviously read his dossier (Four Blind Mice, 2002, etc.), and they know the new guy is “close to psychic,” a “one-man flying squad” who’s already a legend, “like Clarice Starling in the movies.” It’s lucky that Cross’s reputation precedes him, because his fond creator doesn’t give him much to do here but chase suspects identified by obliging tipsters and worry about his family (Alex Jr.’s mother, alarmed at Cross’s dangerous job, is suing for custody) while the Wolf and his cronies—Sterling, Mr. Potter, the Art Director, Sphinx, and the Marvel—kidnap more dishy women (and the occasional gay man) and kill everybody who gets in their way, and quite a few poor souls who don’t.
As in summer movies, a triple dose of violence conceals the absence of real menace when neither victims nor avengers stir the slightest sympathy.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-60290-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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