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A review by smark1342
Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy
I thought this was the weakest of the underworld USA trilogy but I still had fun reading it and you could rip off 50 pages at a stretch without blinking. Every Ellroy book I've read previous to this has at its core the idea that all people, even the ones who have spent the last 1500 pages, say, oh, I don't know, going for the rare MLK/JFK/RFK assassination trifecta can be redeemed through love. It's a weird trick but some time in the last 50 pages of all his books you get a glimpse of something other than the insanely narsty grotesque preceding bits of the novel and I always kinda buy it and am impressed (maybe even moved?) by it. In this one all the main characters need to have a come to Jesus moment basically from the get go and it's political/romantic rather than romantic/political. His lefty guerilla types absolutely don't scan. I think more than anything you just cant convincingly make joan and Karen the ideologically pure bomb throwing commies he wants them to be and have them willingly associate with a creep like Dwight. Per the kinda Christian thing about redemption in all these books...people are willing to forgive A LOT.
Also I think he finds a lot of the domestic race/culture war scenes a lot funnier than I do. Maybe I'm simultaneously desensitized and ultra sensititized to some of this stuff but man it's just a long slog through the Byzantine machinations of various conflicting hate groups. He still has his fastball though, a few sentences and plot lines really manage to shine through. Also I think the plot was a little more complicated and confusing than the previous two. Finally it's very clear he, ellroy, kinda sees himself as crutch, a real guy he knew in real life, right down to the missing mother. But for some reason I thought some of the writing in Marsh's journal (the authorship of which kinda gets called into question-were we reading Dwight writing as Marsh the whole time?) sounded the most like The Good Ellroy. In sum I kinda liked it but all the other Ellroy cinematic universe is a lot closer to my heart. I will never ever recommend this book to an acquaintance and a friend will need to have already displayed a fondness for all this shit before I'd even think of it.
Also I think he finds a lot of the domestic race/culture war scenes a lot funnier than I do. Maybe I'm simultaneously desensitized and ultra sensititized to some of this stuff but man it's just a long slog through the Byzantine machinations of various conflicting hate groups. He still has his fastball though, a few sentences and plot lines really manage to shine through. Also I think the plot was a little more complicated and confusing than the previous two. Finally it's very clear he, ellroy, kinda sees himself as crutch, a real guy he knew in real life, right down to the missing mother. But for some reason I thought some of the writing in Marsh's journal (the authorship of which kinda gets called into question-were we reading Dwight writing as Marsh the whole time?) sounded the most like The Good Ellroy. In sum I kinda liked it but all the other Ellroy cinematic universe is a lot closer to my heart. I will never ever recommend this book to an acquaintance and a friend will need to have already displayed a fondness for all this shit before I'd even think of it.