James Ellroy's "The Cold Six Thousand," is as difficult to read and as insightful as a transcript of a Trump rally. Is it possible that an author, who has spent perhaps years in agonizing research, might resent his readers breezing through his/her novel from EWR to LAX and retaliate by writing the next novel with such antagonistic brutal staccato sentences and sentence fragments, and with more than sufficient gangster patois, and with so many twists of motivations and puzzling consequences, so as to make his reader grind teeth and spit invectives in search of some vague clarity of meaning? An exception are the epistolary inserts, mostly fictional (one assumes) FBI documents which are clearly written and either expositions or transcriptions of conversations or illegal surveillances.
All in all, the book is a very long linguistic nightmare.

“Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.”

Firstly I should point out that this book is the sequel of "American Tabloid" regarded by many as the basis to the cult movie Pulp Fiction.However, as I can attest, it can be read as a stand alone.

''The Cold Six Thousand,'' depicts an American political underbelly teeming with conspiracy and crime as seen through the eyes of three mid-level operatives: Ward Littell, an F.B.I. agent turned mob lawyer; Pete Bondurant, a hired killer and racket operator; and Wayne Tedrow Jr., a Las Vegas policeman and son of a crooked union leader cum casino owner in the city. The novel begins a few minutes after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and follows its characters as they become embroiled with the burgeoning civil rights movement, the Las Vegas gambling industry and the Vietnamese opium trade, and ends with the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The F.B.I., the Ku Klux Klan, the C.I.A., Cuban political expatriates, J.Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes to name but a few also make an appearance and at some time or other the three main characters will end up working for or with each of these entities -- sometimes several of them at once.

This novel will not teach anybody anything new about any of the events that take place throughout, instead it leans very heavily on the side of the conspiracy theories of the time. It is richly peppered with scenes of violence although this rarely if ever gets gratuitous and plenty of what is no doubt regarded as gangster slang of the time. Many of the sentences are only two or three words long and many are repeated tabloid style yet my copy of this novel is nearly 700 pages long so is a pretty hefty tome.

Now to me the length rather than being it's strength is it's weakness. The tale is just too far reaching and I must admit that on more than one occasion I was tempted to throw in the towel with it however, I did soldier on and complete it. Personally I would have preferred Ellroy concentrated on one historical event rather than so many. Nor did I really find the three main characters with their somewhat convoluted and entwined alliances that convincing, this was particularly true of that of Ward Littell. In the end I felt that it was OK but reads like the author's pet hobby-horse rather than a true work of fiction IMHO and ultimately was left frustrated instead of enlightened by it. ( )

This is the second book of Underworld USA . It begins with the turmoil in Dallas after JFK's assassination and ends with the assassination of RFK. Ellroy shows relentlessly the corruption within the regims up to the highest places, the mafiose participations of different groups, Vietnam with all the dark machinations and acting with heroin as well as the rise and fall of Martin Luther King. Money and envy rule the world. Many of the protagonists from the first book of this trilogy have their fingers in the book. I will probably meet some of them in the third volume while others are dead.
Ellroy has a very special writing style. Sometimes it is like a telegram to read, then again as fluid as a thriller. In any case, it is very exciting and entertaining. ( )

Did not disappoint after American Tabloid. The writing style is distinctly odd, there's a rhythm that you have to fall into and when you do it's almost like poetry. Once again, I think Ellroy is pretty close to the truth here. If you're into crime fiction, conspiracy theories and American history, this series covers all the bases. ( )

Knopf First Edition w/o slip cover