The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
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Book Reviews of The Big Nowhere
Book Review: a dark and interesting read. If you Like L.A. con. check it out !
Summary: 4 Stars
The Big nowhere, a great murder mystery / Cops and bad guy's story set in Los Angeles in 1950. The Story revolves around 3 characters, Danny Upshaw, Mal Considine and Buzz Meeks. Danny becomes obsessed with solving murder of a homo sexual whose body was mutilated. Buzz Meeks and Mal Considine are brought together by Ellis Lowe along with Dudley Smith to investigate the communist influence in the Hollywood studios. Their lives and respective cases are loosely brought together, each character slowly and progressively brought together on the others case for difference reasons.
James Ellroy was originally brought to my attention (like many others I'm sure) by the movie L.A. confidential. I absolutely loved the movie and found out about the books that took place around the movie. I stared with "The Black Dahlia" which takes place prior to "The Big Nowhere" which takes place prior to "L.A. Confidential." I enjoyed The Dahlia enough that I decided to read the next in line and I wasn't disappointed. The big nowhere is substantially darker in nature than L.A. Confidential and if you have a weak stomach this book is probably not for you.
It was great to get a little back story on Buzz and Dudley who both appear in L.A. and I will have a little further appreciation for both characters when I watch the movie again, and Nowhere also has a little tie in with L.A. making that story a little more complete if you saw it prior to reading Nowhere.
The Good: Like Dahlia and L.A. the characters are believable. They are very grey. No one is completely good or likable. They are willing to do what they believe necessary to get the job done and each has his own reason for doing what they do and the reasons aren't always noble. Again no white knights in these stories. Very graphic. Some might view this as bad but to me it made the story feel real. It is hard to go into too much detail without giving the goods away and will just leave the good by saying the book was a good read and anyone who liked L.A. or Dahlia should give it a try.
The Bad: The only negative review I read about the book noted that the plot was too complex and became convoluted. This isn't totally untrue. You are reading 3 points of view on two separate cases and during the story a lot of names are mentioned and at points you may have to flip back a page of two to remember who someone was. The cases are complex and at times you may not feel like they are moving forward. Tough it out if you start feeling like this the pay off will definitely be worth it.
Overall a good book I recommend giving a read.
Book Review: Complex & Grim - but worth persevering
Summary: 4 Stars
Early on I never thought I'd be able to slog my way through this book. Why? One, there seemed to be too many characters to keep track of. The book follows the lives of three men in detail: a cop, a district attorney's investigator and a bagman for Howard Hughes. This triples the plot lines and numbers of supporting characters. Two, the hard-boiled prose, meant to evoke the vocabulary of those living on the shady side in 1950s LA, is blunt. It's a style that takes a lot of getting used to - more like reading a newspaper article than a work of fiction. Three, the communist witch hunts in Hollywood, one of the subplots, isn't the most interesting topic in the 2000s.
But wow! When the three main characters' paths converge, things really start to fizz. Throw in a serial killer, mutilations, cannibalism, incest, homosexuality, violence, lots of double-crossing and flawed men, it becomes one cracking read that's not for the faint hearted. I felt compelled to read the last 200 pages in one sitting. Full marks to James Ellroy on the intricate plotting of this grim tale. It begs another read just so you can appreciate the artfulness with which the story has been constructed.
Book Review: Noir resurgence
Summary: 4 Stars
The Big Nowhere would be as good if not better than The Black Dahlia were it not perhaps for the ending, which I found in some respects frustrating. The novel never flags, however, even the last chapters, and every page of it is worth it. Ellroy's second instalment in the L.A. Quartet - four novels set in L.A. whose plots are not however related - runs the parallel and intertwined stories of a chase after a serial killer and a witch-hunt for leftist Hollywood actors and screenwriters. It remains true to the neo-noir category to which the Quartet belongs, set a few years after WWII and using that same mix of hard-nosed pessimism, Hollywood imagery, and humanity that made Hammett's and Chandler's masterpieces. At the same time, while The Big Nowhere doesn't have the staccato style of Ellroy novels, it is direct, graphic, and hard hitting. This is fast making it as a classic of the genre.
The last two novels in the L.A. Quartet, by the way, are L.A. Confidential and White Jazz. I am looking forward to reading them.
Book Review: My first Ellroy
Summary: 4 Stars
This was my first Ellroy that I had read when I picked him up in 1995, I loved the book then and thought it might have been the greatest crime fiction I had ever read.
Rereading the novel, I am slightly less enamoured by the book, mainly due the seemingly rushed pace of the last 50 pages but it is still a brilliant piece of work and makes anything that the author has written since American Tabloid seem pretty weak.
You get a great feel for the main characters (Danny, Mal and Buzz) and the mental tortures that the three of them endure throughout the book.
Recommended if you have the time to immerse yourself totally in the book, it is not a novel that one can just pick up and put down and hope to pick up again a few days later as the plot is so complex and interwoven.
Book Review: A skillful piece of crime drama
Summary: 4 Stars
After more than enjoying Ellroy's Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, I gripped this book. Maybe it was a tiny disappointment, since the story didn't really get going until I was halway through, but in the end I felt satisfied anyway. Ellroy is really a tough guy, his books are among the most brutal and cynical I've ever read. There is humanity, he seems to say, but it's destiny is always to give way for lust of power and money. A realistic view, truly. The Big Nowhere is maybe even darker than his other books - in the end, all there's left is... well, the big nowhere, and man driving through it, probably heading for his own death. That's what they call existentialism, I suppose. Ellroy has something to say, which is rare nowadays.