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The Barnes & Noble Review
James Ellroy's aptly named American Tabloid was a
gaudy, audacious account of crime, scandal, and politics that ended in Dallas on November 22, 1963, seconds before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Cold Six Thousand begins just minutes later and takes us on a wild, surreal ride through the period of violence, trauma, and civil unrest that followed in the wake of Kennedy's death. Like its predecessor, The Cold Six Thousand is an astonishing book,
the largest, most ambitious work to date by our greatest living crime writer.
The story begins when Las Vegas policeman Wayne Tedrow Jr. arrives in Dallas. Kennedy is dead, Oswald is in custody, and turmoil reigns. Wayne arrives bearing $6,000 in bounty money, his fee for the projected execution of fugitive criminal Wendell Durfee. Against a
backdrop of escalating chaos, Wayne succeeds in locating Durfee and then permits him to escape, a decision that will haunt him in the years to come. At the same time, he finds himself caught up in the brutal aftermath of the Kennedy killing. In an act of synchronicity that will alter his life, Wayne falls under the influence of two of the assassination's principal conspirators, Pete Bondurant and Ward J. Littell.
Bondurant, a former employee of Howard Hughes, is a pimp, drug dealer, hit man, and extortionist. Littell is a former FBI agent who now works for Jimmy Hoffa and assorted members of the Mob. He is a man driven by massive contradictions and by his increasing desire for personal redemption. Ellroy follows Wayne, Littell, and Bondurant as they make their
way -- sometimes in concert, sometimes individually, -- through the twisted history of the 1960s. The sprawling narrative ranges from Dallas to Cuba, from Washington to the Klan-dominated South, from Las Vegas to Vietnam. Along the way, Ellroy illuminates the arcane world of organized crime, the inner workings of the Southeast Asia heroin trade, and the virulent racism that characterized the era. He also examines, in speculative but plausible fashion, the forces he believes responsible for the back-to-back assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The Cold Six Thousand is told in Ellroy's patented staccato style, a style that delivers huge amounts of information without pausing for breath or wasting a word. With almost effortless authority, Ellroy merges his convoluted fictional scenario with the actual material of modern history. In the process he creates a memorable gallery of real and imagined characters, including such grotesque, stranger-than-fiction figures as the demented, drug-addicted Howard Hughes and the rabid, racist, dictatorial schemer J. Edgar Hoover. The result is an authentically nightmarish vision that transcends the limits of traditional crime fiction, offering us a portrait of our recent past that is disturbing, compelling, convincing, and absolutely
impossible to put aside. (Bill Sheehan)
Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).
Playboy
[A] mesmerizing nightmare of gangdom's power and glory....With riveting style and substance, Cold Six is Ellroy's biggest score.
This is the finest novel of its kind to come out in 2001 and, if there is any order in the universe, it will run off with all the cookies. Ellroy's breathtaking styleCharles Bukowski-meets-Oliver Stone-perfectly complements his last three novels (all of which fictionalize recent American history). His latest bold and masterful book follows a group of men who manipulate (and are manipulated by) political and social events from the day JFK is assassinated in Dallas through the assassination of his brother, Robert Kennedy. The intricate plot ties together not only both assassinations, but the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, organized crime, you name it. The main characters are Wayne Tedrow Jr., a Vegas cop whose daddy is a publisher of right-wing tracts; Pete Bondurant, ex-CIA gadfly and brilliant mastermind; and Ward Littell, ex-FBI agent and lawyer for both the mob and Howard Hughes. Stringing together all these historical events is an audacious undertaking, even if the history itself is not always true. When you read Ellroy's book, you become hypnotized by his compelling, staccato sentences; you enter completely into another world, where language owns reality and where the novel's reality owns you.
Randy Michael Signor
(Excerpted Review)
Publishers Weekly
Clipped, stylized, hard-nosed and repetitive, this novel cuts like a dark, 24-hour Beat poem and sounds like Jack Webb on crack. Ellroy's latest noir tale is full of his trademark violence, sex and rough language. Readers follow five years in the life of Las Vegas police officer Wayne Tedrow Jr., who begins the novel making a trip to Dallas to kill a pimp for $6,000. From there, Tedrow is inadvertently mixed up with practically every cultural and political event and figure of the 1960s: Vietnam, Cuba, the Kennedy assassinations, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, Sonny Liston, mobster Carlos Marcellos, Martin Luther King Jr. and J. Edgar Hoover. Craig Wasson does an excellent job of translating the written page into a day-length rap of short phrases, peppering listeners with rapid cuts and jabs until they are exhausted yet exhilarated. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Ellroy's latest novel looks at the dark side of American life during the 1960s, focusing on a Las Vegas police officer, Wayne Tedrow Jr., and his inadvertent role in the cover-up of John F. Kennedy's assassination. The narrative spans a five-year period and traces Tedrow's dealings with the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, and various political and cultural icons of that time period. Ellroy's fast-paced tale takes the reader on a breathtaking ride through the underbelly of America. It is readable yet complex in its character development and critical examination of U.S. public policy. Like most of Ellroy's works among them L.A. Confidential and The Crime Wave it is graphic in its description of violence and should be reserved for a mature audience. Recommended for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/01.] Thomas Auger, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Picking up roughly where American Tabloid left off, Ellroy's big, ambitious new novel, bristling with violence, rockets through the 1960s naming names and weaving a terrifyingly believable tale of linked conspiracies in the three assassinations that shook America to the core. This is Plymouth Rock turned over after three centuries to expose the creatures wriggling in the dark beneath the surface of the American Dream. Ellroy begins with JFK's murder and cover-up, which inadvertently involve Wayne Tendrow, a Las Vegas cop with a wobbly moral compass and a love/hate relationship with his wealthy, controlling, right-wing, racist father. Wayne encounters two characters reappearing from American Tabloid: Ward Littell, ex–FBI agent, lawyer to the mob and to Howard Hughes, is a disillusioned closet liberal described as "lugging a Jesus Cross in his sewer"; Pete Bondurant, ex-CIA and current mob enforcer, is rabidly anti-Communist and anti-Castro. Through the perspectives and actions of these three men, the story tracks the complex convergence of interests among organized crime, the right-wing establishment, the KKK, and elements of the CIA and FBI that led to the three assassinations. Intertwined subplots describe Howard Hughes's takeover of Vegas hotels and casinos, CIA trafficking in heroin during the Vietnam War, Cuban gunrunning, and covert FBI manipulation of the civil-rights movement. The large cast includes a wonderfully arch and sinister J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Ruby, Guy Banister, Sal Mineo, Bayard Rustin, Sonny Liston, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, and several mobsters, real and imagined. Ellroy's style and pace are blistering as always, although it must be said that the unrelenting and occasionally gratuitous violence at the periphery of his main story sometimes undercuts the larger horrors he describes. A chilling tapestry of fact and fiction, an exhilarating read, and an informed, deeply disturbing speculation regarding the ties between criminals and America's shadow government.