A review by nigellicus
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy

dark mysterious tense

5.0

I think this was my first Ellroy, or was it LA Confidential? Anyway, the clipped prose confused me, demanded attention, but the characters and the plot and the setting all came to life in their seedy, nasty, bloody glory, which overcame any diffictulties with the reading. An ugly New Year's Eve murder leads a repressed but ambitious young detective on the hunt for a dangerous killer. An anti-communist hearing, mostly designed to get the mob-connected Teamsters to supplant the existing studio union, gets underway, digging for dirt and blackmail to extort confessions and more names. The two are connected, and will draw in three cops, all basically terrible human beings, into a struggle to acheive a shred of redemption.