Detectives - the dominant characters of the 20th Century Discuss

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The other derivation thst keeps coming up is via the Yiddish word for Sexton although I'm not really reading a good explanation of why it should be slang for a PI.
Yeah, I have to say that the connection there, if there is one, is not obvious to me.
 

version

Well-known member
still - LA Quartet is a masterpiece

I'm still sad that the film cut out the Disney conspiracy stuff
I've got about 60 pages left of L.A. Confidential and I'm surprised at how much they chopped the plot about for the film; expected it to be a bit different, but it's so much more tangled in the book and the timeline's completely different. They also merged Dudley and Preston for the film, cut out the whole Atherton case and a bunch of other things. Both good though.
 

version

Well-known member
Might jump straight into White Jazz after finishing this one.

He published a new novel recently, you know. Sounds like some Hollywood Babylon thing;

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in '50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp--and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine.

Confidential
presaged the idiot internet--and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson--Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he's here to CONFESS.

"I'm consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I'm revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW."

In Freddy's viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950s Hollywood to the ground. It's a blazing revelation of coruscating corruption, pervasive paranoia, and of sin and redemption with nothing in between.

9780593319345
 

william_kent

Well-known member
White Jazz is revolutionary

the publisher originally told him it was too long, so Ellroy chopped out all the unnecessary words resulting in a masterpiece of terseness
 

version

Well-known member
White Jazz is revolutionary

the publisher originally told him it was too long, so Ellroy chopped out all the unnecessary words resulting in a masterpiece of terseness
I thought he did that with L.A. Confidential first then consciously developed it into a style from White Jazz onward. He's already got the rat-a-tat thing going in the former.
 

version

Well-known member
Ellroy is rubbish now and there is a specific reason for it, an act of cowardice which truncated his career, specifically the refusal to write up the Reagan era.
He got to the 60s then retreated back into the 50s.
 

version

Well-known member
Is Don Winslow any good? He sometimes gets compared to Ellroy, Ellroy doing Mexican drug cartels.
 

woops

is not like other people
White Jazz is revolutionary

the publisher originally told him it was too long, so Ellroy chopped out all the unnecessary words resulting in a masterpiece of terseness
we've been through this before haven't we? sounds like a myth to me. the ellroy style is too distinctive to have happened by accident. is my opinion. having said that who's that bloke who wrote could you please be quiet please. raymond carver. his gamously famously laconic minimal style is apparently an editorial collaboration.
 
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