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ajnel's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
"Blood's a Rover" is the final novel in the "Underworld USA" historical fiction series. Elroy uses the same staccato writing style as in the two previous novels, coupled with the same "overlords" (e.g. Hoover and Vegas Mob). As in "The Cold Six Thousand," the novel picks up directly where the previous novel left off and flies directly into new conspiracies panned against historical events. Though not as tightly written as "American Tabloid" and at times rather sentimental and introspective, the novel provides a satisfactory continuation and eventual conclusion, albeit written almost 20 years later. One of the best historical crime fiction series available. 4.5/5
dcox83's review against another edition
5.0
The latest from James Ellroy finds his characters not influencing national events like they did in American Tabloid or being caught up in them like they were in The Cold Six Thousand. Instead, they’re trying to do what feels right to them while navigating their way through the war between black militants and the FBI, mobbed up casinos in the Caribbean and a fictional armored car heist.
The big twist this book takes away from other Ellroy novels is how empowered women are throughout the whole story. Instead of being passive objects, the women in Blood’s a Rover out-lie, out-cheat and out-manipulate the male leads, which creates an interesting new dynamic. To be honest, I got a little bored in The Cold Six Thousand b/c it felt too familiar, but I never had that issue with Blood’s a Rover.
I think I just appreciated how much his characters evolved throughout the novel because of those new dynamics without losing the conspiracy/crime novel/mystery aspect that makes all of Ellroy’s book entertaining.
The big twist this book takes away from other Ellroy novels is how empowered women are throughout the whole story. Instead of being passive objects, the women in Blood’s a Rover out-lie, out-cheat and out-manipulate the male leads, which creates an interesting new dynamic. To be honest, I got a little bored in The Cold Six Thousand b/c it felt too familiar, but I never had that issue with Blood’s a Rover.
I think I just appreciated how much his characters evolved throughout the novel because of those new dynamics without losing the conspiracy/crime novel/mystery aspect that makes all of Ellroy’s book entertaining.
andrew61's review against another edition
3.0
I have enjoyed and also been challenged by ellroy's narrative form over the years. The LA quartet are among my favourite crime books as was the imagination of American tabloid. Perhaps Bloods a Rover was too rambling and too indulgent, I didn't enjoy the characters and the ending was unsatisfactory. I've given it a 3 star review as in the realm of crime fiction it is still challenging and better than the norm just not my favourite Ellroy!
carmelitasita's review against another edition
1.0
I couldn't even finish this drivel. I picked it up because it was on a "best of" list, apparently forgetting how much I detested his writing style in the first book of this series. Short sentences annoyed me (I'm pretty sure the average of five or six words a sentence is fair) as did short sections; is it possible this book was written for those afflicted with adhd? The jargon was ridiculous. Violence and sex were spread rampantly throughout the part I managed to read, needlessly and for shock effect I'm assuming. Ugh. Why do people like this book so much?
stevenfsantana's review against another edition
4.0
For awhile I thought this would be the weakest of the USA Underworld trilogy but the final third really pays off, especially the final pages.
duffypratt's review against another edition
4.0
Ellroy does redemption. It's not pleasant. There's a mantra that runs throughout the book: "Nobody dies." But this is Ellroy. So you can guess how well that works out.
In some ways, this review is pointless, at least as a guide to any potential reader. Let's face it: if you've read American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, you already know whether you are going to read this one or not. If you haven't read either of those, then you owe it to yourself to give American Tabloid a shot, or maybe start further back with The Black Dahlia or The Big Nowhere. These are some of my favorite books (White Jazz is still tops of Ellroy for me), and Ellroy is one of my favorite writers.
After The Cold Six Thousand, I wondered how he was going to crank the style up another notch. Maybe he would figure out a way to write a book that contained nothing but one word sentences? Instead, he eased off a little bit on his formal restrictions. The fractured sentences coming in threes disappears here, and Ellroy allows himself a bit of freedom in his constructions. This makes for easier reading. Here, he allows himself sentences as complicated as you would find in a Dick and Jane primer, and he uses this to evoke an astonishing array of effects and emotions, from hipster kidding, to brutal torture, to pure hallucinogenic voodoo shit. All in short, simple declarative sentences. It's brilliant, fascinating, addicting, and a bit offputting all at once.
The main characters are typical Ellroy. Wayne Tedrow - ex-racist, mobbed-up, personal Heroin chef for Howard Hughes. He sells Las Vegas casinos to Hughes, and then helps the mob launder the skim money they steal after the sales. He has a reputation for killing negroes, but few people know that he masterminded the hit on Martin Luther King. Now he's trying to set up some offshore casinos for the mob to take the place of what they lost in Cuba.
Then there's Dwight Holly. He's an FBI enforcer, tied in tightly with J. Edgar himself. He also commands the admiration of Nixon. His main job here is to get informants into black militant groups, start the groups running heroin into the ghetto, and then make some busts to discredit the entire black nationalist movement. It's the biggest bug up Hoover's ass, in his declining years, and Holly does what Hoover wants. (He, too, was in on the assassinations of RFK and King).
The new kid on the block is Don Crutchfield. AKA Peeper and Dipshit. He turns his peeping penchant into a career. He also has insatiable curiosity, and the inability to let go of anything. In some ways, he is the proxy for Ellroy himself. Almost everyone in the book underestimates Crutch. But Ellroy makes him almost too powerful.
And, in a twist, there is a fourth POV character who comes in late for his POV sections. That would be Scotty Bennett, an LAPD officer who wears a bowtie embroidered with 18s, for the number of black armed robbers he has killed. By the end of the book, I don't know how high the number would be. Besides legal (and some illegal) murder, Bennett has a pure fixation on an open case -- an armored car robbery back in 1964 where the surviving thieves got away with a couple of mill and a shitload of emeralds.
The book starts just before the 68 convention riots, and basically covers the Nixon administration. There are two main differences between this book and the earlier two. First, this book involves a series of failures by the main characters. In those books, the characters set out to do terrible things, and by and large, they succeed. The main characters there are horrible, vicious, and very effective. Here, the main characters become riddled with doubts. And they also tend to fail in their main goals. And their failures are intimately tied to their quest for some kind of redemption. In this way, I think this book, and the main characters, hark back to figures like Buzz Meeks from The Big Nowhere. Also, I want to point out that I am definitely oversimplifying here. It's a broad impression that I have, but there are lots of details that point other ways, so other people might disagree.
This book also had some great humor. One of my favorite things in the book is the treatment of Watergate. Basically, Holly dumps off the job to Howard Hunt because he's too busy and more interested in the other evil shit he's involved with. For the real players here, Watergate merits simply an afterthought.
I haven't read many reviews, but I find it hard to believe that Ellroy, especially in these last three books, would have readers who did not react strongly. It seems to me that you should either love him or hate him. I can't imagine being blase. I love him. I think his vision of history is manic, sick, twisted and vulgar. I also find it compelling and hard to dismiss, and that comes largely from the force and conviction of his writing. It's rare to see anyone writing stuff that is simultaneously so compellingly honest, and so transparently false. It takes a rare kind of brilliance to pull this shit off, and I'm really happy that Ellroy has done it.
I also think its oddly fitting that I finished this book on July 4.
In some ways, this review is pointless, at least as a guide to any potential reader. Let's face it: if you've read American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, you already know whether you are going to read this one or not. If you haven't read either of those, then you owe it to yourself to give American Tabloid a shot, or maybe start further back with The Black Dahlia or The Big Nowhere. These are some of my favorite books (White Jazz is still tops of Ellroy for me), and Ellroy is one of my favorite writers.
After The Cold Six Thousand, I wondered how he was going to crank the style up another notch. Maybe he would figure out a way to write a book that contained nothing but one word sentences? Instead, he eased off a little bit on his formal restrictions. The fractured sentences coming in threes disappears here, and Ellroy allows himself a bit of freedom in his constructions. This makes for easier reading. Here, he allows himself sentences as complicated as you would find in a Dick and Jane primer, and he uses this to evoke an astonishing array of effects and emotions, from hipster kidding, to brutal torture, to pure hallucinogenic voodoo shit. All in short, simple declarative sentences. It's brilliant, fascinating, addicting, and a bit offputting all at once.
The main characters are typical Ellroy. Wayne Tedrow - ex-racist, mobbed-up, personal Heroin chef for Howard Hughes. He sells Las Vegas casinos to Hughes, and then helps the mob launder the skim money they steal after the sales. He has a reputation for killing negroes, but few people know that he masterminded the hit on Martin Luther King. Now he's trying to set up some offshore casinos for the mob to take the place of what they lost in Cuba.
Then there's Dwight Holly. He's an FBI enforcer, tied in tightly with J. Edgar himself. He also commands the admiration of Nixon. His main job here is to get informants into black militant groups, start the groups running heroin into the ghetto, and then make some busts to discredit the entire black nationalist movement. It's the biggest bug up Hoover's ass, in his declining years, and Holly does what Hoover wants. (He, too, was in on the assassinations of RFK and King).
The new kid on the block is Don Crutchfield. AKA Peeper and Dipshit. He turns his peeping penchant into a career. He also has insatiable curiosity, and the inability to let go of anything. In some ways, he is the proxy for Ellroy himself. Almost everyone in the book underestimates Crutch. But Ellroy makes him almost too powerful.
And, in a twist, there is a fourth POV character who comes in late for his POV sections. That would be Scotty Bennett, an LAPD officer who wears a bowtie embroidered with 18s, for the number of black armed robbers he has killed. By the end of the book, I don't know how high the number would be. Besides legal (and some illegal) murder, Bennett has a pure fixation on an open case -- an armored car robbery back in 1964 where the surviving thieves got away with a couple of mill and a shitload of emeralds.
The book starts just before the 68 convention riots, and basically covers the Nixon administration. There are two main differences between this book and the earlier two. First, this book involves a series of failures by the main characters. In those books, the characters set out to do terrible things, and by and large, they succeed. The main characters there are horrible, vicious, and very effective. Here, the main characters become riddled with doubts. And they also tend to fail in their main goals. And their failures are intimately tied to their quest for some kind of redemption. In this way, I think this book, and the main characters, hark back to figures like Buzz Meeks from The Big Nowhere. Also, I want to point out that I am definitely oversimplifying here. It's a broad impression that I have, but there are lots of details that point other ways, so other people might disagree.
This book also had some great humor. One of my favorite things in the book is the treatment of Watergate. Basically, Holly dumps off the job to Howard Hunt because he's too busy and more interested in the other evil shit he's involved with. For the real players here, Watergate merits simply an afterthought.
I haven't read many reviews, but I find it hard to believe that Ellroy, especially in these last three books, would have readers who did not react strongly. It seems to me that you should either love him or hate him. I can't imagine being blase. I love him. I think his vision of history is manic, sick, twisted and vulgar. I also find it compelling and hard to dismiss, and that comes largely from the force and conviction of his writing. It's rare to see anyone writing stuff that is simultaneously so compellingly honest, and so transparently false. It takes a rare kind of brilliance to pull this shit off, and I'm really happy that Ellroy has done it.
I also think its oddly fitting that I finished this book on July 4.
martinza's review against another edition
English Review at the bottom (read German translation)
Buch über Arschlöcher die Arschlochdinge tun, die ich nicht verstehe. Habe bis S350 nicht verstanden, was das ganze überhaupt soll. Auch langweilig und ohne Spannungsbogen. Eine Aneinanderreihung von belanglosen Gesprächen und Spionagejobs. In dem Buch kommt keine Person vor, der ich jemals begegnen möchte. Habe das Gefühl, dass das Buch nur geschrieben wurde, um möglichst viele racial slurs zu verwenden. Die deutsche Übersetzung versucht jeden existierenden deutschen und amerikanischen racial slur unterzubringen. Keine Ahnung, ob dies irgendwelche realistischen Verhältnisse darstellt. Wenn ja, warum das ganze so dumm und sinnlos darstellen?
Diese App lässt einen keine Sterne vergeben, wenn man angibt das Buch nicht beendet zu haben. Wäre eher niedrig. Habe aber auch nicht verstanden, was das ganze soll.
Book about arseholes doing arsehole things of which I don’t understand the purpose. Kinda boring. Just a sequence of meaningless conversations and spy jobs. There is not a single person in the book I want to ever meet in real life. Feels like the book was just written to use as many racial slurs as possible in coherent appearing sentences. Although, I didn’t manage to understand for the 350 pages I read what the point of this is. I have no clue if this depiction of things is realistic and if - why in this dull and meaningless way?
Buch über Arschlöcher die Arschlochdinge tun, die ich nicht verstehe. Habe bis S350 nicht verstanden, was das ganze überhaupt soll. Auch langweilig und ohne Spannungsbogen. Eine Aneinanderreihung von belanglosen Gesprächen und Spionagejobs. In dem Buch kommt keine Person vor, der ich jemals begegnen möchte. Habe das Gefühl, dass das Buch nur geschrieben wurde, um möglichst viele racial slurs zu verwenden. Die deutsche Übersetzung versucht jeden existierenden deutschen und amerikanischen racial slur unterzubringen. Keine Ahnung, ob dies irgendwelche realistischen Verhältnisse darstellt. Wenn ja, warum das ganze so dumm und sinnlos darstellen?
Diese App lässt einen keine Sterne vergeben, wenn man angibt das Buch nicht beendet zu haben. Wäre eher niedrig. Habe aber auch nicht verstanden, was das ganze soll.
Book about arseholes doing arsehole things of which I don’t understand the purpose. Kinda boring. Just a sequence of meaningless conversations and spy jobs. There is not a single person in the book I want to ever meet in real life. Feels like the book was just written to use as many racial slurs as possible in coherent appearing sentences. Although, I didn’t manage to understand for the 350 pages I read what the point of this is. I have no clue if this depiction of things is realistic and if - why in this dull and meaningless way?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Cursing, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Misogyny, Violence, Addiction, Alcoholism, Homophobia, Murder, Xenophobia, Alcohol, and Hate crime
Is dripping of racial and other slurscapital_letter's review against another edition
4.0
Found this secondhand and hadn't read the previous two books, so I was a bit lost at first, but this still definitely works as a standalone novel. Can't really say much more without having read the rest of the trilogy, but to my mind this was very different to the Ellroy I've read before, with a lot more in the way of international intrigue, conspiracy, sorcery and general political skullduggery, whilst still oozing noir attitude and immersing you in the dank underbellies of the cities it's set in - primarily LA, but there are some more exotic locales as well.
Might shock or open a few wounds for some readers, given its basis in modern history and its utter refusal to pull any punches as far as I could see, but for those who can stomach all that it's an interesting read on multiple levels.
Might shock or open a few wounds for some readers, given its basis in modern history and its utter refusal to pull any punches as far as I could see, but for those who can stomach all that it's an interesting read on multiple levels.
deborama's review against another edition
4.0
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12796529
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12796529