The Cold Six Thousand: Underworld USA 2

The Cold Six Thousand is a daringly direct take on the biggest events in America in the 1960s - the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, civil rights leader Martin Luther King and JFK's younger brother Senator Robert F Kennedy. All this set against the first few years of the US involvement in Vietnam, the cold war and the stand-off with Cuba, with considerable influence from such figureheads as FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes and the leading dons of the US Mafia. Officially we know who killed JFK, MLK and RFK, but after reading this sprawling novel, sequel to the even better American Tabloid, you may wonder if the author's version of events is closer to the truth. All of the 'official' guilty parties feature, including Palestinian activist Sirhan Sirhan who I believe is still in a California jail some 40 years on....but did he pull the trigger of the gun that killed Bobby Kennedy? This novel doesn't specifically and unambiguously answer that question, but Ellroy is in no doubt at all as to who was behind the presidential assassination. If taken literally (which is difficult not to do) it's impossible not to be disgusted at the extraordinary levels of corruption, racism and political manipulation that lay behind the face of the United States in the Swinging Sixties. The Ku Klux Klan were highly influential in CIA strategy, and although the political impetus behind the US involvement in Vietnam is somewhat glossed over (Linden B Johnson barely has a talking part, unlike JFK in American Tabloid), the CIA's heroin processing 'business' is documented in great detail, as one of the three primary characters Wayne Tedrow Junior (a former policeman) becomes primarily responsible for the labs set up in Vietnam and Laos for creating a massive 'White Horse' production line which has at least two key objectives - to establish a distribution network in Las Vegas among negroes only, and to finance 'The Cause' : collaboration with the Mafia in their attempts to overthrow Castro in Cuba and repossess their casinos which they had invested so much money into. The other two lead characters, Ward Littell and Pete Bondurant, are carried over from American Tabloid, and for me one of the best features of both books is the description of how the lives and personalities of these two men are shaped and changed by their murderous activities. These men are cold-blooded killers with soft hearts - and in Bondurant's case a rather weak one. In a way it's amazing that so much history has been squeezed into one riveting novel; if you know nothing about the truth on which it's based it still makes compelling reading, but if (like me) you are among the many who want to know what really happened back then, this story will probably satisfy on another level, and put the whole sordid series of events into some kind of perspective. I cannot miss this opportunity to add that there appears to be a case for an allegation of history repeating its

The staccato-style is both fascinating and brilliant, but apparently some people's prayers have been answered as it appears as though the man will alter styles with part 3 as indicated in the below excerpt from a relatively recent interview... "It came about accidentally, in that I needed to cut 150 pages of L.A. Confidential. It was plot-inviolate, but it ran too long. Thus I began to trim individual scenes, so that there's a telegraphic quality to the prose that fits the story I'm telling: the violence of the action and the violence of the language. I utilized that to a greater degree, stream-of-consciousness style, in White Jazz, which is written in the first person. Then I went back to a more standardized, more explicated style in American Tabloid and My Dark Places. The style I developed for The Cold Six Thousand is a direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards. It was appropriate for that book, and that book only, because it's the 1960s. It's largely the story of reactionaries in America during that time, largely a novel of racism and thus the racial invective, and the overall bluntness and ugliness of the language. And the book that I'm working on now, which is a sequel to The Cold Six Thousand, is a different style entirely."

To call this "hard-boiled noir" simply does not do it justice. Ellroy continues his journey through the many places and faces of evil, and in the process, crafts some amazing characters and provides them with the opportunities to engage in all manner of depravity and cruelty, all within the backdrop of the turbulent times of America, circa 1963-68. Yet, Ellroy manages to actually get you to root for guys like Pete Bondurant, an accomplished assassin. Somehow, you still want him to come out on top in the end, while simultaneously neglecting the heinous crimes [two of which were particularly gruesome] he conducts throughout the book. As for what he's supposed to come out on top of, I'm not quite sure. With Bondurant, Tedrow, and Littell, they may be evil and rotten, but not necessarily at their respective cores. One thing the book is not is a mystery. There are a few twists in the story here and there, but you know "who done it" throughout nearly all of the book. Ellroy's writing, while it could always be described as "clipped," is nearly shorn entirely here. At times, I likened it to "Dick and Jane Go to Hell." That's not to say I dislike it, only that this continuous form sometimes serves to accentuate the book's bloated length. A minor quibble, and insignificant in the overall review, particularly given Ellroy's ability to weave intricate schemes and plots through his characters, and the incredible imagery he evokes through his clipped prose, such as this jewel: Pete opened it. Pete smelled it. They saw it: The severed legs. The diced hips. Mom's head in the vegetable bin. Overall, a sprawling picture of crime and the depths of evil to which humans--indeed, Americans, if a tenth of what Ellroy writes is true--will explore. Unsettling, diabolical, even hilarious. Above all, a visceral masterpiece in crime fiction.

This man should either be given a Pulitzer or arrested immediately. Reading him is like getting in a claw-hammer fight. I'm going to take a shower now.

I began reading "The Cold Six Thousand" without realising it was part of a trilogy. Bam! The style of Ellroy's prose hit me and I didn't want to lay the book down. Amazing writing. It's clean, invigorating and absolutely brilliant . It makes YOU think. That's what I love about it. I've worked as an editor for years (currently for a Thai newspaper, which explains why I missed out on "American Tabloid") and a screenwriter in Hollywood (the reason I got the hell out of LA) and I've been force fed so much purple prose and "cinematic" description that most novels cloy me like cheap incense. But this book.... Ellroy doesn't f--k around. Bang! Here's your image: YOU fill in the blanks. The book works your mind so much more than your average "the sun flamed the sky's azure cast as Jesse's hurtling corvette crisscrossed the abandoned hightway...." prose pumped out by writers doing literary and mental push ups. I immediate fell for the originality of "The Cold Six" and didn't want to put it down; that is until I found out it was the follow-up to "American Tabloid". Then I faced the decision of stopping my read and buying "Tabloid" to put things in the right order, which I did. Well, a chapter or two into "Tabloid" I realised I was hungering to get back to "The Cold Six Thousand's" terse, wondrous poetry. Many feel that "Tabloid" is a better book but, for now, the writing of "The Cold Six" has me locked in. Those who say they're not getting character development or plot because of the lean sentences must need to be spoon-fed "raven black hair" tossing. Ellroy is an amazing stylist and now I'm convince our finest contemporary novelest. E Annie Proux, eat your heart out. Ellroy writes from a real idiom that rings true, not pretentious. A marvellous book that will only gather more accolades with as time passes. Highly recommended.