C.T. Phipps’s Reviews > The Big Nowhere > Status Update

I really love how even when our protagonist plan to do the right thing and achieve redemption, they end up cutting a deal with the communist leader because it will benefit them personally.

Watching the story start to reach its climax is like a slow moving train crash. I'm surprisingly most interested in how the divorce case moves out as the protagonist is such an awful piece of shit but you also get his feelings towards his kid are sincere.

Getting Danny Upshaw, the closeted gay man, to seduce Claire de Haven is a hilarious twist. Of course the other options are a spouse abuser (who actually does like her) and the human tire fire that is Buzz Meeks. Kind of fascinating.

The revelation Danny Upshaw is a closeted gay man was something I expected but works well in the story, especially as the rest of his fellow police officers are finally cluing in. Sadly, I don't see a good ending for him.

Mal Considine is a character that I think has rapidly shot to being the worst of the antiheroes present in the book. His spousal abuse of a Holocaust victim is pretty much as absolutely irredeemable as a character can get. I think James Ellroy expected us to believe Celeste was telling the truth about her Nazi "lover" but I don't believe that is likely.

The book is focused on two interesting period-appropriate elements with anti-communism (and the fact that actually fighting Soviet agents was immaterial to its use as a reactionary witch hunt) and the Sleepy Lagoon murder. Throwing in the seiral murder of gay men with it feels like this has perhaps one plot too many.

The book has a bit of "been there, done that" with its protagonists but the use of three instead of one (and a sort of second) like in The Black Dahlia does give it some oomph. Danny Upshaw who wants to solve a gay-related crime the other cops don't, Buzz Meeks who is a genuinely repulsive individual, and Mal Considine who is a seemingly good and honest man with a violent awful abusive side just waiting to come out.

I was a big fan of The Black Dahlia and was interested in seeing where this book would take me. I admit I am mostly looking forward to LA Confidential after the movie but we'll see what the next book has to talk about.