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COLD SIX THOUSAND, THE
by James Ellroy
Vintage Books, June 2002
688 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 037572740X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Wayne Tedrow, Jr., Las Vegas intell squad, is sent to Dallas to kill a black pimp named Wendell Durfee. The Casino Operator's Fund has chipped in $6000 to get it done. Durfee had shivved a 21 dealer, who lost an eye. The trail led to Dallas. When Tedrow arrives, there's something bigger going on. Everyone is walking around crying, distraught. It's November 22, 1963, and JFK has just been assassinated.

Ward Littell, former cop and now a mob lawyer, consults with the big guys like Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcello. He also convenes with Mr. FBI, as in J. Edgar Hoover, who manages the spin on JFK. It's important to make it look like a one-man operation, even though the reality is that there are a lot more people involved in it than that. Anyone who can cannibalize the Lee Harvey Oswald as lone killer scenario needs to be disposed of. Most of them are, with the exception of a woman that has hooked Littell in spite of himself. Finally, enter Pete Bondurant, guy who does whacks, mob enforcer, guy with big plans for running drugs in Las Vegas and a distinguished alumnus of the Bay of Pigs. He's involved in the assassination, can't talk about it, and it haunts him totally. That day in Dallas was a pivotal event which had a long-lasting impact on each or these 3 men's lives for years to come. The other lead character in the book and one who drives many of the happenings is J. Edgar Hoover. What a paranoid, scheming piece of work he was!

This is an ambitious book, which might well have been entitled Six Thousand Conspiracies. We begin with the assassination of Kennedy which is credited to his angering the Mob in his approach to the Cuban situation. The book moves forward through the mid 60s. Several of the characters end up working a heroin pipeline deal in Vietnam during the early Johnson years; others are running guns to Cuba. Littell is working on a scheme with Howard Hughes to buy up Las Vegas Casinos; Hoover is directing a mudslinging campaign against Martin Luther King. And Wayne is on a personal vendetta to eliminate Wendell Durfee after the brutal slaying of his wife. Ellroy leads us through 5 years of conspiracies, concluding 700 pages later and leaving us with all our assumptions about the history of those times wavering.

Ellroy's writing style takes some getting used to. He writes in very short, 3-5 word declarative sentences. It's hard to build the flow of the plot because the style is so staccato. Within a few pages, I was lusting for adjectives. After 50 pages, I had to stop and go back to the beginning because I couldn't follow what was happening. Once I did that, however, I was able to get caught up into the book, although there were other times where I had difficulty following exactly what was going on. The structure of the book was to have several chapters where specific characters were followed, and then transitional chapters along the way where various explicatory documents were inserted, such as transcripts of telephone calls between Ward Littell and J. Edgar Hoover or memoranda between the characters. This provided some relief and contrast to the writing style of the main narrative.

In addition to being a hard book to read because of the over-stylized writing, there is raw violence and heavy racism that is sometimes hard to take. Overall, I'm of two minds about the book. I found it difficult to read, confusing and aggravating as far as the writing style. But I was full of admiration for the scope of the book and the way that Ellroy presented the various conspiracies with enough detail so that you could believe his alternative theories and have you questioning what really did happen. He shows a corrupt society peopled with morally depraved, manipulative, obsessed and sadistic individuals. If you're a fan of the previous entry in this projected trilogy, American Tabloid, you'll love this book. I didn't exactly love it, but I sure couldn't put it down either!

This review is based on the hardcover edition published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2001.

Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, August 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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