I love hard-boiled voices. Why? You might ask. Because I like seeing a dickhead get punched in the gullet and knocked on his keister. I take an absurdly sick pleasure in this scenario. Again, you might ask why. Well…because I have literally been an underdog my entire life. I might as well have a t-shirt with the mantra “Constantly Underestimated.” If it were a theme song, I’d sing the chorus, pound the drums, and lead the backup vocals. But I don’t mind. In fact, it’s great when the bar is set low enough that I can practically crawl over it, and I set my goals as high as a CEO, and somewhere in the middle, I come crashing through like a hurricane, to the point that I might as well have stunned my opponent with a Taser, stapled his head to the carpet, put a metal plate in his head, and fired up the microwave.And that’s what a good hard-boiled novel does for me. I down a bottle of Jack, fire my Beretta at my flat screen, and then wait for the fuzz to show up at my door, so I can show those coppers a thing or two. And Fritz Brown certainly uses his .38 when the situation warrants it. The voice was hard enough that I might as well have been picking grit and grim out of my teeth with a chainsaw. I savored every minute of the journey. I was transported to a time where rebop and Daddy-O were common lingo, although both were used a bit too frequently for my liking. That’s the downside to slang: It doesn’t normally age well.But that was a small price to pay for a story that had me digging my fingers into the sofa cushions and was filled with enough beautiful broads and dames to start a backup band. My personal favorites were Jane Baker and Kallie and Dori, all of whom packed more than enough feminine wiles to start a drunken riot with the right rowdy crowd. The men—Omar Gonzalez and Walter Curran and Richard Ralston—proved just as interesting and even more intimidating.Every PI needs the right mode of transportation, and the Camaro served Fritz’s purposes well. Its heft and muscle popped off the pages and into my living room, the engine roaring louder than a mountain lion. Even brief interactions—Brothers Mark and Randy and Kevin and Bob and Sisters Julie and Carol—proved a nice respite from the heart of the action, and had me salivating at the fire pit, although the thought of gamey grilled dog nearly flipped my stomach.If hard-boiled PIs and time warps are your forte, and you don’t mind early Ellroy where he’s still refining his craft, then you might find yourself enjoying the ride. Just make sure you hold on tight and occasionally squeeze your eyes shut.I’d like to end with a monologue that has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to BROWN’S REQUIEM, that I stole off of Wikipedia, which they stole from The Evening Class. Other than being entirely entertaining, it serves no orthopedic function. James Ellroy often starts public appearances with a version of the following: “Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. These books will leave you reamed, steamed and drycleaned [sic], tie-dyed, swept to the side, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed [sic]. These are books for the whole fuckin' family, if the name of your family is Manson.” Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
Mysterious Book Report No. 140by John Dwaine McKennaLos Angeles, California has long been the epicenter for crime fiction of all types. They include police procedurals, courtroom dramas and private eye yarns by a long list of world class authors like Raymond Chandler, Earle Stanley Gardner and Dashiel Hammett from the golden age of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, as well as more modern writers such as Joseph Wambaugh, Walter Mosley and Michael Connelly. One of my personal favorites however, is a perennial heavyweight, “The dark poet of noir fiction,” whose stories routinely take bleak and unexpected turns on the way to a dazzling and electrifying conclusion. I’m referring to James Ellroy, who is one of the greatest living writers of noir fiction in the world. Ellroy’s life has been marked by tragedy, homelessness, drug abuse and alcoholism, crime and time in jail. He has incorporated all of his life experiences into his writing, and it makes his prose and narratives pop and sizzle with an electric intensity that grabs the reader on page one and never lets go until the conclusion.Brown’s Requiem, (Perennial Harper Collins, PB $13.99, 348 pages, ISBN # 978-0-380-73177-0) by James Ellroy was first published in 1981, and republished in 2001, and it’s only gotten better with age. The protagonist, Fritz Brown, has been cold sober for nine months and six days. He’s a licensed California private eye who works and lives in Los Angeles, a disgraced former LAPD vice cop, kicked off the force for violence and drunkenness, an enthusiast of German classical music, who pays his bills by doing repossessions for Cal Meyers, a big time automotive operator with several Los Angeles new and used car dealerships.The tale begins when, after a successful repo, some instinct tells Fritz that his life is about to change. A short time later it does, when an overweight, badly dressed homeless man by the name of Freddy Baker, ‘Fat Dog’ to those who know him, walks into Fritz’s office and hires him. The job is to tail Fat Dog’s sister for a week; find out what her relationship is to an older man she’s living with in Hollywood. Fat Dog makes his money as a professional golf caddy, working at various country clubs in and around Los Angeles . . . and he’s carrying around a wad of money amounting to thousands of dollars. But, it’s not the only strange thing Fritz notices about Fat Dog, whose hinky ideas and weird behaviors turn a routine surveillance job into a deadly hunt for a serial arsonist and stone cold killer as Fritz attempts to solve a decades old mass murder. Take time out from reading the ‘latest and greatest’ and get familiar with some of the ‘older and bolder’ classics of crime fiction. See for yourself why James Ellroy is the undisputed master of noir.Like the review? The greatest compliment you can give is to share it with others on Facebook and Goodreads.www.Facebook.com/JohnDwaineMcKennawww.Goodreads.com/JohnDwaineMcKenna
What do You think about Brown's Requiem (1998)?
James Ellroy's first novel is very much a first novel - albeit the first novel of a soon-to-be-great writer. In fact, if this were anyone but James Ellroy, I might be giving it a 4-star review, for the confident, lyrical fluidity of the prose; the command of character and description; the verisimilitude and the evocative atmosphere of Los Angeles in the 80's. Knowing what Ellroy was yet to become, however, it's hard not to compare Brown's Requiem to LA Confidential or any of Mr. E's later greater works.You get a sense of the later Ellroy in Brown's Requiem, a brutal noirish tale of bad guys and evil doings in the world of Los Angeles country club caddies. The dark, wounded narrator ( in the style of the noir Chandleresque hero a fallen cop, private detective and repo man) has the voice of a tough, manly loner with a drinking problem, as he plies his trade under the depressive skies of a brooding and malevolent but somehow hypnotically fascinating Los Angeles. In Brown's, however, the macho voice is strained and overdone, the brutality a bit forced, and the plot twisted into its rather illogical form. The female characters in Ellroy's early works are pretty one-dimensional in the "she done me wrong" model, and Jane, the love interest in Brown's Requiem, is no different. Brown's Requiem fulfills all the standard conventions of the average noir detective novel, but with more style and craft than heart.What's exciting about reading this novel is being like a person from the future - you know what is to come in Ellroy's writing, and you know you're going to like it.
—Melissa Peltier
My edition of this has a neat introduction from Ellroy, which set the scene for how he came to write the book, gives a little more background to some of the events, and expresses a desire that his books get better chronologically.I did find some of the characterizations slightly superficial (compared to later works of his that I've read), and the plot did feel slightly jumbled together.However there's still a kernel of goodness underlying the brutality and slightly sketchy start to his novel writing career. Of it's ilk it's not the best by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a good introduction to Ellroy and the more complex books that follow. Frankly, if I could write a first novel that good I wouldn't be too ashamed.
—Godzilla
This is the 10th Ellroy I've read but I've only listed 2 on Goodreads so far & only given one of them a very quickie, very inadequate 'review'. Ellroy deserves better - & probably gets it elsewhere - it's not like he's a neglected writer. When the movie "L.A. Confidential" came out I thought it was the only Noir movie I'd seen in recent yrs that measured up to what made the original noir interesting in the 1st place. But I didn't know it was written by Ellroy then. It wasn't until many y
—tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE
