Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
Everyman's Library (2019), 600 pages
Description
Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ready to deploy at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black militants are warring in southside L.A. The Feds are concocting draconian countermeasures. And fate has placed three men at the vortex of history. A stand-alone sequel to The Cold Six Thousand.
Media reviews
This is lurid material treated luridly, but with beauty and heft.
If this sounds confusing, it's also classic noir, which isn't about plot so much as drawing the reader into an entire world—from Communist Cuba to the seedy underbelly of Vegas.
The prose has calmed down, too; it’s gone off the caffeine. It needed to—Blood’s a Rover is a more thoughtful, searching book than its predecessors.
Ellroy's bleak, brooding worldview, his dense, demanding style and his unflinching descriptions of extreme violence will almost certainly alienate large numbers of readers. But anyone who succumbs to the sheer tidal force of these novels will experience something darker, stranger and more
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compelling than almost anything else contemporary fiction has to offer. Show Less
In "Blood's a Rover," sleaze and skullduggery and dread drip off every page, and Ellroy has built both a myth and a monument. It'll blow your mind. From the gutter to the stars.
Toward the end, Ellroy stops to darn the fraying, flapping strands of the exploding plot, but rather than pulling things together, the exercise has the effect of reducing what was an immense and persuasive phantasmagoria to an implausible caper.
"Blood's a Rover" concludes an epic fictional project that has been wild and brilliant, dazzling and funny, and even, let's admit it, repetitive and hectoring.
History is refracted and reflected through Ellroy’s peerless paragraphs, lending a fresh urgency and a thrilling sense of rediscovery to events thoroughly analyzed. Blood’s a Rover commands your attention from the first page and, thanks to its heft, makes reading in piecemeal
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daunting.
Ellroy’s latest is American fiction writing at its finest — a dexterous, astounding achievement. Show Less
In this tale of the ramifications that spin off an armoured-car heist in Los Angeles, he reveals his keen eye for the shapes that lurk within shadows—to the best effect of his career... “Blood’s a Rover” achieves a greater depth, emotional resonance and sense of closure than his earlier
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books. This trilogy is a work of ambition unmatched among contemporary crime novelists. Only Roberto Bolaño, with his genre-bending mysteries, approaches Mr Ellroy’s skill at simultaneously hewing to and subverting the genre’s conventions. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member JollyContrarian
Whatever your view about James Ellroy, his Underworld USA trilogy is quite a piece of work and Blood's A Rover, its culmination, is one hell of a way to go out. He may have had the indelicacy to say it, but having closed the cover it's hard to disagree with Ellroy's own assessment of this novel's
Many of Ellroy's stylistic hallmarks, love 'em or hate 'em (for the record, I love 'em) are here: grandiloquent authorial claims to greatness, unremittingly bleak Hobbesian worldview (though here it is ultimately, if brutally, suffused with a sort of redemption), casual and unsettlingly entertaining violence and depravity, assorted strands of bigotry and a Byzantine, conspiracy-theory-goosing plot - all counterpointed with almost unbearably sparse, non-adjectival prose. It's all here. Most remarkable is the book's style and economy. James Ellroy says the plot outline for Blood's A Rover ran to 400 pages; the finished article is well shy of 650. In the hands of any other writer, this sort of enterprise would never get done short of 1500.
On that score, many detractors bitterly and bizarrely complain about Ellroy's prose style. On this site, the weaker ones lampoon it poorly. I find this complaint particularly absurd. If you like your prose style conventional, stay away: there are literally millions of workaday writers whose published works will keep you happy in your reading till your dying day. If there are millions of elegant stylists; there's only one James Ellroy; I can't think of another author (perhaps Cormac McCarthy) with as singular a stylistic vision, let alone such a stubbornness and bloody-minded commitment to his craft. Celebrate a writer with the talent, attitude and fortitude to do something different.
Ellroy's writing generally, and the Underworld USA series particularly, take some getting used to, for sure - it's virtually a dialect: a condensed, shorthand patois where half as many words carry twice as much content as conventional sentence. The temptation is to study every word hard, so as not to miss a vital clue. But to do this is to miss the vibrancy, the flow, the rhythm - the *vibe* - which is as important to grasp as the content itself. Like waterskiing, you need to aquaplane through the text to manage it.
And when you do, it's just exhilarating reading - short passages magically concertina into complex images. On the other hand, Ellroy's narrative method counterpoints the curtness of his prose: he tends to reframe the same information from multiple perspectives (the book is told from the point of view of three principle protagonists, together with diaries, reports and transcripts of conversations between half a dozen others), so if you keep the speed up, the shorthand argot miraculously and brilliantly coheres. At times it's like beat poetry; it syncopates, it grooves.
For all that (and despite some claims to the contrary) James Ellroy *has* eased up his prose styling from the three-word sentence limit on display in The Cold Six Thousand. Particularly with some helpful expository diaries, this is an easier - but no less rewarding - read.
The book's unusual title, taken from an A E Housman poem, jars at first - difficult at first glance to see the resonance between late 20th century American high-political intrigue and 19th century English poem cycle called A Shropshire Lad, conjuring as it does images of a cloth-capped teen in tweed plus-fours wheeling an iron bicycle up a narrow country lane. But Housman's work, in its way, was as unrelentingly grim an essay on the waste of life as is Ellroy's: a sort of grim inversion of a carpe diem where the moral is "don't lie a-bed, lad - get up and get out there ... But, come to think of it, while you're hard at it fighting Boers and so forth, most likely your best mate will be busily stealing your sweetheart away".
Now there is a "lad" herein - Don Crutchfield - who in his ascribed habits and history (a small time private eye with a missing mother and a penchant for popping pills and peeping windows) bears no small resemblance to a certain J Ellroy (as revealed in the autobiographical My Dark Places), so you do wonder whether the title and character are some sort of note to self.
In any case it's an extraordinary note. Without a doubt one of the best books of the decade.
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matchless quality. This is a really, really outstanding novel from an outstanding and unique writer.Many of Ellroy's stylistic hallmarks, love 'em or hate 'em (for the record, I love 'em) are here: grandiloquent authorial claims to greatness, unremittingly bleak Hobbesian worldview (though here it is ultimately, if brutally, suffused with a sort of redemption), casual and unsettlingly entertaining violence and depravity, assorted strands of bigotry and a Byzantine, conspiracy-theory-goosing plot - all counterpointed with almost unbearably sparse, non-adjectival prose. It's all here. Most remarkable is the book's style and economy. James Ellroy says the plot outline for Blood's A Rover ran to 400 pages; the finished article is well shy of 650. In the hands of any other writer, this sort of enterprise would never get done short of 1500.
On that score, many detractors bitterly and bizarrely complain about Ellroy's prose style. On this site, the weaker ones lampoon it poorly. I find this complaint particularly absurd. If you like your prose style conventional, stay away: there are literally millions of workaday writers whose published works will keep you happy in your reading till your dying day. If there are millions of elegant stylists; there's only one James Ellroy; I can't think of another author (perhaps Cormac McCarthy) with as singular a stylistic vision, let alone such a stubbornness and bloody-minded commitment to his craft. Celebrate a writer with the talent, attitude and fortitude to do something different.
Ellroy's writing generally, and the Underworld USA series particularly, take some getting used to, for sure - it's virtually a dialect: a condensed, shorthand patois where half as many words carry twice as much content as conventional sentence. The temptation is to study every word hard, so as not to miss a vital clue. But to do this is to miss the vibrancy, the flow, the rhythm - the *vibe* - which is as important to grasp as the content itself. Like waterskiing, you need to aquaplane through the text to manage it.
And when you do, it's just exhilarating reading - short passages magically concertina into complex images. On the other hand, Ellroy's narrative method counterpoints the curtness of his prose: he tends to reframe the same information from multiple perspectives (the book is told from the point of view of three principle protagonists, together with diaries, reports and transcripts of conversations between half a dozen others), so if you keep the speed up, the shorthand argot miraculously and brilliantly coheres. At times it's like beat poetry; it syncopates, it grooves.
For all that (and despite some claims to the contrary) James Ellroy *has* eased up his prose styling from the three-word sentence limit on display in The Cold Six Thousand. Particularly with some helpful expository diaries, this is an easier - but no less rewarding - read.
The book's unusual title, taken from an A E Housman poem, jars at first - difficult at first glance to see the resonance between late 20th century American high-political intrigue and 19th century English poem cycle called A Shropshire Lad, conjuring as it does images of a cloth-capped teen in tweed plus-fours wheeling an iron bicycle up a narrow country lane. But Housman's work, in its way, was as unrelentingly grim an essay on the waste of life as is Ellroy's: a sort of grim inversion of a carpe diem where the moral is "don't lie a-bed, lad - get up and get out there ... But, come to think of it, while you're hard at it fighting Boers and so forth, most likely your best mate will be busily stealing your sweetheart away".
Now there is a "lad" herein - Don Crutchfield - who in his ascribed habits and history (a small time private eye with a missing mother and a penchant for popping pills and peeping windows) bears no small resemblance to a certain J Ellroy (as revealed in the autobiographical My Dark Places), so you do wonder whether the title and character are some sort of note to self.
In any case it's an extraordinary note. Without a doubt one of the best books of the decade.
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LibraryThing member andy475uk
A long, complex novel which befits the last of the trilogy. It's a worthy although long-winded challenge to get through it and I didn't enjoy it as much as parts one (American Tabloid) or two (The Cold Six Thousand) and overall still prefer the LA Confidential trilogy.
LibraryThing member 5hrdrive
I've never been so disappointed in the concluding book in a series before. The first two books open up the possibilities to LOTS of conspiracies involving some of the biggest stories and personalities of the 20th century. You feel as though you're on the inside of the FBI, CIA, Mafia, and
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anti-Castro movement during the Bay of Pigs and multiple political assassinations (JFK, MLK, RFK). Then you finish with this 600 page slog... it's like Ellroy ran out of story before his three-book contract was up. Show Less
LibraryThing member LamontCranston
The third and final part of the American Underworld.
Ellroys 'telegraph' style has been abandoned for straight prose, but this enhances the stories juggernaut & heightens the final emotional crescendo.
Ellroys 'telegraph' style has been abandoned for straight prose, but this enhances the stories juggernaut & heightens the final emotional crescendo.
LibraryThing member sinaloa237
Incredibly complex and it does not always seem necessary.
The story is definitely compelling but it makes me think of these movies: everything is here, well written of course but way too long.
The story is definitely compelling but it makes me think of these movies: everything is here, well written of course but way too long.
LibraryThing member ehines
In the past, I've enjoyed Ellroy's writing. I've read this trilogy with an increasing sense of disappointment each step of the way. The conspiracy theories behind these novels are derivative and tired. the characters unlikable and unlikely. The language, more and more, a kind of faux-gritty ("so
Ellroy's writing now seems to come out of a place where Ellroy says he knows what's real, he knows the truth behind the illusion. he knows how people really live & talk & how the big events really come down.
But the sad truth behind these books is that what Ellroy really knows is a very little, very circumscribed world akin to a masturbatory fantasy. And he knows that some people will be sucker enough to buy into it. Sad.
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contrived, it's hyper-real!" we hear the announcer bark) that achieves a level of unintended humor in this last novel. Though it's not even funny for long.Ellroy's writing now seems to come out of a place where Ellroy says he knows what's real, he knows the truth behind the illusion. he knows how people really live & talk & how the big events really come down.
But the sad truth behind these books is that what Ellroy really knows is a very little, very circumscribed world akin to a masturbatory fantasy. And he knows that some people will be sucker enough to buy into it. Sad.
Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This is the third volume of Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy, in which historical figures from mid-20th century America mix with fictional characters to give us an inside look at dirty politics, corrupt law officers, and the criminal underworld (Mafia). I loved the first volume, American Tabloid,
This final volume begins with the RFK assassination, brings us through the 1968 election of Nixon, continues on with the activities of the Mafia, as well as the decline and corruption of J. Edgar Hoover, and ends as Watergate is beginning. However, I didn't like this one as much as the first two. It seemed more scattered and less focused, and either I began to tire of Ellroy's staccato prose, or it wasn't as compelling as in the first two volumes. In fact, the only reason I kept reading is because the book began with the brutal heist of an armored car, and the failed attempts to solve that crime constitute a sort of leit motif throughout the novel. I kept reading because I wanted answers regarding that crime.
Overall, I highly, highly recommend American Tabloid and also recommend The Cold Six Thousand. Read this one only if you are a completist.
2 1/2 stars
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which took us through the assassination of JFK in Dallas in November 1963. Volume 2, The Cold Six Thousand began in Dallas on the day of JFK's assassination, and brought us through the 1968 assassinations of RFK and MLK. I also liked the second volume, in which many of the same characters from the first book carried through. There's lots about the Vietnam War, LBJ, drugs, the Mafia moving on Las Vegas, and Howard Hughes also making a move on Las Vegas.This final volume begins with the RFK assassination, brings us through the 1968 election of Nixon, continues on with the activities of the Mafia, as well as the decline and corruption of J. Edgar Hoover, and ends as Watergate is beginning. However, I didn't like this one as much as the first two. It seemed more scattered and less focused, and either I began to tire of Ellroy's staccato prose, or it wasn't as compelling as in the first two volumes. In fact, the only reason I kept reading is because the book began with the brutal heist of an armored car, and the failed attempts to solve that crime constitute a sort of leit motif throughout the novel. I kept reading because I wanted answers regarding that crime.
Overall, I highly, highly recommend American Tabloid and also recommend The Cold Six Thousand. Read this one only if you are a completist.
2 1/2 stars
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LibraryThing member Ameise1
This is the third part of the Underworld USA trilogy. At first it was again a summary of all the protagonists, before it was about Nixon's campaign on the one hand, but also about how Hoover clings to his position with all the tricks. It is about drugs, gang wars, money laundering and shows once
Once again it was extremely interesting.
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again how corrupt the police and various secret services are. In doing so, their peers fight to the blood and go over dead bodies.Once again it was extremely interesting.
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LibraryThing member JasonChambers
Not for the fainthearted. Brutal but pretty damn great.
LibraryThing member thisisstephenbetts
Fairly disappointing Ellroy. Still an exhilirating ride, but the pay-off was very unsatisfying. This is the conclusion to his American Tabloid trilogy. The first part was based around the assassination of JFK, and the second around those of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Ellroy, justifiably,
All of the major mysteries - set up in the early part of the book, and driving much of the plot throughout - fizzle out into perfunctory and largely unbelievable (even by Ellroy standards) conclusions. It really felt like he hadn't plotted the book fully enough and ended up writing himself into a corner. If he had been using them just to drive along the plot he really shouldn't have built them up so much.
It's a shame, because the Ellroy roller-coaster or misanthropy does still deliver. And he has curbed some of his more annoying tics, while maintaining his kinetic, punchy prose. His conflicted and compromised anti-heroes are still compelling (although his propensity to kill his characters off - while admirably shocking - does mean that you feel seen his archetypes several times before), and the hallucinatory passages, particularly in Haiti, are immersive. He still delivers a convincing vision of a familiar world refracted through a prism of violence, fear and hate. Perhaps best of all, he introduces a young and ingenuous (as far as an Ellroy character can be) character that seems to have a lot of the young and wayward Ellroy, and hence feels particularly believable. I would like to read more about him.
Unfortunately, by the end of what should have been the crowning work of an impressive and challenging trilogy, I felt that Ellroy had over-indulged himself, and perhaps believed his own hype a little too much.
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decided not to cover the Watergate scandal in the third volume, but that left no comparable historic events to anchor this book, making it feel a far less significant work. This sadly drags down the two preceding tomes by association and leads to the question of whether he should have bothered making the series into a trilogy.All of the major mysteries - set up in the early part of the book, and driving much of the plot throughout - fizzle out into perfunctory and largely unbelievable (even by Ellroy standards) conclusions. It really felt like he hadn't plotted the book fully enough and ended up writing himself into a corner. If he had been using them just to drive along the plot he really shouldn't have built them up so much.
It's a shame, because the Ellroy roller-coaster or misanthropy does still deliver. And he has curbed some of his more annoying tics, while maintaining his kinetic, punchy prose. His conflicted and compromised anti-heroes are still compelling (although his propensity to kill his characters off - while admirably shocking - does mean that you feel seen his archetypes several times before), and the hallucinatory passages, particularly in Haiti, are immersive. He still delivers a convincing vision of a familiar world refracted through a prism of violence, fear and hate. Perhaps best of all, he introduces a young and ingenuous (as far as an Ellroy character can be) character that seems to have a lot of the young and wayward Ellroy, and hence feels particularly believable. I would like to read more about him.
Unfortunately, by the end of what should have been the crowning work of an impressive and challenging trilogy, I felt that Ellroy had over-indulged himself, and perhaps believed his own hype a little too much.
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Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2009-09-22
Physical description
600 p.; 8.4 inches
ISBN
1101908149 / 9781101908143