Word: ellroyã
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...America: I window-peeped four years of our history. It was one long mobile stakeout and kick-the-door-in shakedown. I had a license to steal and a ticket to ride… I am going to tell you everything.” At the beginning of James Ellroy??s latest novel, “Blood’s a Rover,” the third installment of his “Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy,” one of the book’s three narrators proposes to retell the history of America between June...
...their three paths intersect through the events of a mysterious unsolved robbery and an elusive woman named Joan Rosen Klein. Each protagonist is searching for something related to both Ms. Klein and the crime, a search that carries them all down a communal path of violence, hatred, and destruction. Ellroy??s is a well-crafted foray into the dark-side of America, but the author’s attempt at absolute historic totality hinders the novels complete success. Ellroy??s desire to account for almost every day in the book’s nine-year time...
Like much of Ellroy??s fiction, “Blood’s a Rover” is at least in part homage to pulp literature—a genre whose mandate is one of instant gratification. But at 640 pages, Ellroy??s latest dwells too often and for too long on aspects of the plot that, for their sheer monotony, never seem important. The truth behind the robbery and Joan Klein’s identity are both revealed so slowly that the value of surprise is squandered. None of the three protagonists are ever completely...
...communism, and the eventual death of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from a more cynical perspective than the history books. His account of the era orients the readers in the plot and leaves them with a true sense of the anger, both righteous and profane, that highlighted the period. Ellroy??s distinctive style—the brief, spare syntax reminiscent of hardboiled detective fiction—sets a dark tone for the novel and lends itself to this retelling of history. Yet, while the history is interesting, the unfolding of the mystery of the robbery and Joan Klein...
...climax arrives, the reader is so distracted by all the unrelated corruption and death that the answers to the puzzle do not seem very important. Such strengths and shortcomings leave “Blood’s a Rover” a fitting, though far from perfect conclusion to Ellroy??s trilogy...