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White Jazz
536 pages
A frantic, blood-soaked descent into the darkest, most corrupt corners of 1950s Los Angeles, delivered in a breathless, staccato rhythm.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like being strapped into a runaway car careening through the neon-lit, blood-spattered streets of 1950s Los Angeles. The experience is defined by its radically stripped-down, telegraphic prose, a staccato barrage of nouns and verbs that mimics the frantic, paranoid heartbeat of its narrator. It is an overwhelmingly claustrophobic and dread-soaked atmosphere, immersing you in a world where every cop is dirty, every politician is bought, and morality is a luxury no one can afford. The pace is relentlessly propulsive, dragging you through a labyrinth of systemic corruption and brutal violence. It will thoroughly delight readers who crave uncompromising, pitch-black noir and experimental writing that assaults the senses and leaves a lasting, gritty residue.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- gritty
- nightmarish
- Tone
- cynical
- frenetic
- brutal
- paranoid
- unforgiving
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- systemic corruption · moral decay · survival at all costs · the illusion of justice · historical paranoia
- The writing
- Stripped to the bone, the telegraphic, staccato sentences read like a frantic, blood-spattered police wire.
- The arc
- The journey plunges from cynical detachment into a frantic, paranoid scramble for survival, culminating in a desperate, bloody grasp at redemption.
- Who it's for
- Fans of uncompromising, ultra-violent noir who appreciate experimental, rapid-fire prose that pulls absolutely no punches.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- police brutality
- historical racism and slurs
- sexual violence
- drug abuse
- misogyny
About the book
The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. 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, ""a bad cop to draw the heat,"" and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins-all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, ""forty-two and going on dead,"" it's dues time. Klein tells his own story-his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing-taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive. Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.
Description from Open Library.
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