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White Jazz (L. A. Quartet, Bk 4)
White Jazz - L. A. Quartet, Bk 4
Author: James Ellroy
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,...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780679414490
ISBN-10: 0679414495
Publication Date: 9/1/1992
Pages: 349
Edition: 1st American ed
Rating:
  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
 2

4 stars, based on 2 ratings
Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review
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kdet avatar reviewed White Jazz (L. A. Quartet, Bk 4) on + 30 more book reviews
Good story
Kibi avatar reviewed White Jazz (L. A. Quartet, Bk 4) on + 582 more book reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Blacker than noir, this latest novel from the author of L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia is set in 1958 and features a dirty LAPD detective with a breathtaking mastery of corruption. Dave Klein, a gangland heavy, USC law grad and police lieutenant, can thread a legal loophole as easily as he slips on brass knuckles. Assigned by the police commissioner to head an investigation into a narc squad payoff source, Klein smells a setup. To save himself, he traces a genealogy of double-dealing that includes incest, institutionalized bribery and police corruption, all going back decades. Ellroy's telegraphic style, which reduces masses of plot information to quick-study shorthand, captures the seamy stream-of-consciousness of this tainted cop and carries the reader from initial repulsion to a fascination that lingers long after the story's last notes have faded away. Ellroy adroitly transfers the manic energy of scat and bebop to this final volume of his tense, lowdown L.A. epic. Moreover, he demonstrates perfect pitch for illegalese, but the hepcat banter never obscures the complex plotting of politics and pre-Miranda rights police work, a combination that here makes most other crime novels seem naive.
reviewed White Jazz (L. A. Quartet, Bk 4) on + 30 more book reviews
Similar to a hard-boiled Mickey Spillane novel, this takes place in Las Angles in the late 50s, when the cops were corrupt, the Mob had their fingers into everything - murders, beatings, bribery, scams, shakedowns - all of that is in this novel. If you like noir movies, yu'll like this book.


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