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Hurtling from Las Vegas to Vietnam to Cuba to Memphis and back again (and all points in between), from Dealey Plaza to opium fields to smoke-filled back rooms where the mob holds sway, the novel traces the strands of complicity, greed, and fear that connect three men to a legion of supporting characters: Ward Littell, a former Feeb whose current allegiance to the mob and to Howard Hughes can't mask his admiration for the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; Pete Bondurant, a hit man and fervent anti-Communist who splits his time between Vegas casinos and CIA-sponsored heroin labs in Saigon; and Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop who's sent to Dallas in late November 1963 to snuff a black pimp, and who is fighting a losing battle against his predilection for violence: "Junior was a hider. Junior was a watcher. Junior lit flames. Junior torched. Junior lived in his head."
And behind these three, J. Edgar Hoover is the master puppeteer, pulling strings with visionary zeal and resolute pragmatism, the still point around whom the novel roils and tumbles. At once evil and comic, Hoover predicts that LBJ "will deplete his prestige on the home front and recoup it in Vietnam. History will judge him as a tall man with big ears who needed wretched people to love him," and feels that Cuba "appeals to hotheads and the morally impaired. It's the cuisine and the sex. Plantains and women who have intercourse with donkeys."
The Seussian comparison isn't that far-fetched: Ellroy's novel, like the children's books (and like the very decade it limns), is flexible, spontaneous, and unabashedly off-kilter. Weighing in at a hefty 700 pages, The Cold Six Thousand is a trifle bloated by the excesses of its narrative form. But what glorious excess it is, as Ellroy continues to illuminate the twin impulses toward idealism and corruption that frame American popular and political culture. He deftly puts unforgettable faces and voices to the murkiest of conspiracy theories, and simultaneously mocks our eager assumption that such knowledge will make a difference. --Kelly Flynn
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. AMBITIOUS: EXPLOSIVE: STUNNING: BLISTERING: FIERCE: EPIC: PURE UNADULTERATED NOIR: GROUND ZERO: THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2001) First Printing : NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2007) First Printing: NEW handsomely-designed mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $25.95 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ rich-brown woven-fabric wrapping spine & extending 1.26" onto front & back panels handsomely covered in burgundy paper with author's initials "JE" stamp-engraved at top-center of front panel, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & burgundy-gold-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Cheltenham on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.48" x 9.50" x1.62", 1.14 kg, 672 pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, American Tabloid, James Ellroy's high-velocity best-selling novels have redefined noir for our age, propelling us within inches of the dark realities of America's recent history. Here in his ambitious & explosive novel 'The Cold Six Thousand', he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speed-ball through one of the most tumultuous times in all of American history. It begins in Dallas: November 22, 1963. The heart of the American Dream detonated. Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop, arrives with a loathsome job to do. He's got $6,000 in cash & no idea that he is about to plunge into the cover-up conspiracy already brewing around Kennedy's assassination, no idea that this will mark the beginning of a hellish five-year ride through the private underbelly of public policy. Ellroy's furiously paced narrative tracks Tedrow's ride: Dallas back to Vegas, with the Mob and Howard Hughes, south w/ the Klan & J. Edgar Hoover, shipping out to Vietnam & returning home, the bearer of white powder, plotting new deaths as 1968 approaches. Tedrow stands witness, as the icons of an iconic era mingle with cops, killers, hoods, & provocateurs. His story is ground zero in Ellroy's stunning vision: historical confluence as American Nightmare. * HIGH PRAISE: "One of the great American writers of our time." -Los Angeles Times Book Review "James Ellroy is a master . . . using a stripped, spare noir style that hits like a cleaver but is honed like a scalpel." -Chicago Tribune "Nobody in his generation matches the breadth and depth of James Ellroy's way with noir." -Detroit News * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels--The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, & White Jazz--were international best-sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazine's Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a 'Time' Best book of the Year and a NYT Notable book for 1996. He lives in Kansas City. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates. Seller Inventory # 010254
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