The Cold Six Thousand: Summary and book reviews of The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy, plus links to an excerpt from The Cold Six Thousand and a biography of James Ellroy.
The Cold Six Thousand
by James Ellroy
Hardcover: May 2001,
688 pages.
Paperback: Jun 2002,
688 pages.
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. Now, in The Cold Six Thousand, his most ambitious and explosive novel yet, he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speedball through our most tumultuous time.
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 and 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 with the Klan and J. Edgar Hoover, shipping out to Vietnam and 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, and provocateurs. His story is ground zero in Ellroy's stunning vision: historical confluence as American Nightmare.
Playboy
[A] mesmerizing nightmare of gangdom's power and glory....With riveting style and substance, Cold Six is Ellroy's biggest score.
Library Journal
... 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
Kirkus Reviews
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.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by bunny rabbit
it's a really cool book, the story has a fast pace, there are a lot of funny elements in the book, like jew-nited states. there are also a couple pieces that are a bit boring, but generally i liked it. There are some surprising things like to... Read More
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