White Jazz

by James Ellroy

Book Overview

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns--it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679414495
• ISBN13: 9780679414490
• Release Date: September 1992
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 349 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

jazz

Under-rated. Although this book has a few dry patches, it more than makes up for it as the majority of pages read fast paced and extremely entertaining. Among other things, Ellroy achieves new realism with this novel. Ellroy on top of his game. 5 stars.

Simply the best.

I'm a big fan of a wide variety of fiction. Regardless of genre, I admire bold experimentation with prose technique. It doesn't get any better than Nabokov or Faulkner for me. I also like writers who tell far more conventional stories but do so with a flair for language, like Robertson Davies or, in the detective fiction area, Chandler and Hammett.The bottom line? Ellroy deserves to rank not only among Chandler and Hammett for quality of his crime fiction, but, with White Jazz, among Nabokov and Faulkner for the style of his language. White Jazz mainlines the experiences of the protagonist straight into your nervous system, white hot and unfiltered. It takes some adjusting. For the first thirty pages or so, my head hurt. Then something clicked and I was utterly blown away. Perhaps the most visceral read I've ever experienced. And aside from the style, the story is a gripping descent into the dark side of human nature, as typified by the crime and police world of 50s La. This is really as good as crime fiction gets, and some of the best writing from any author of the 20th Century.American Tabloid may be his most satisfying book in a lot of ways, but White Jazz is a work of art. Grim, disturbing art, to be sure, but I find that necessary at times.

A climactic finale

The final showdown that LA Confidential promised us comes together in this novel. Ed Exley and Dudley Smith finally go at it through a most unusual go between who doesn't know what hes getting into between these two, Dave Klein. Klein is a corrupt Vice cop in every way. He's out for himself. But when he gets drawn into the big chess match played by Exley and SMith he starts to question what hes been doing and who he is. A great finish to the authors LA crime novels. Don't be afraid of the style and prose. You'll get used to it quick.

Six Characters in Search of a Verb

The rumor is that Ellroy turned in a 900-page first draft. When his publisher protested, the author cut down the book to itspresent length by eliminating verbs, articles, adjectives, and most other parts of speech. The result is a breathless gallop through a darkly fascinating world of murder, incest, perversion, corruption, greed, and lust. And that's just for starters!Reading WHITE JAZZ is like reading Anthony Burgess's CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The language is a mélange of English, LAPD crimestoppers' jargon, and 1950s pulptalk. Be prepared to deal with 187s, B & E, bootjacking, hinkiness, FIs, 459s, IAD, rebop, snarfing with soshes -- among other things.What makes it all worthwhile is that Ellroy has a great story to tell, and he tells it well even if he invents his own language that only tangentially resembles English. Be prepared for harsh lights thrown into the darkest parts of the human soul. Beprepared for almost universal corruption, varying only in degree. As you spiral into the depths with Ellroy, you can almost feel the walls converging and the floor dropping from under you. This is a worthy conclusion to the author's Los Angeles Quartet. Be sure to read the novels in sequence for a sweeping panorama of 15 years of postwar degradation: THE BLACK DAHLIA, THE BIG NOWHERE, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, and -- not least of them -- WHITE JAZZ.

Definitive Ellroy

This is the most amazing book I have ever read, taking me inside the mind of corrupt,insomniac rogue cop and lawyer Dave Klein, the most memorable of Ellroy's alienated hard men. The plot is tight, zig-zagging all over LA and through a map of the darl underside of fifties America. Although Klein has quite rightly been described as a repulsive human being, like all of JA's characters he is true to himself and has the shopsoiled integrity of a true noir character. The jewel of the LA tetrology, as well as the one that ties up the loose ends from the other three books, this is one that you just have to grit your teeth and read. (Not being distracted by Klein's punch-drunk internal monologue or the gore level, which is high even for Ellroy). A classic of the mystery genre, and of American literature as well.