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NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
The Big Nowhere
Reviewed By Rogue The time and place is 1950s Los Angeles. Communist witch-hunts are the newest game in town, but the dark underbelly of the city is still home to sleaze and violence. Caught in this maelstrom are three men. Danny Upshaw is a Sherrif's Deputy with the West Hollywood substation, assigned to a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about. One of these is a particularly gruesome sex-murder where the male victim has been mutilated. Lt Mal Considine is an LAPD man, assigned to the Red Scare bandwagon, but he is using it to advance his career and gain custody of the adopted son he saved from the horrors of post-war eastern Europe. And Turner "Buzz" Meeks, an ex-narco goon LAPD washout and strongarm man, currently working as Head of Security for Hughes Aircraft, and as a part-time pimp for Howard Hughes himself. Meeks agrees to serve alongside Considine on the DA's anti-commie task force, but he's only in it for the money. What none of them know is that they have all booked a ticket on the sleigh-ride to hell. As the plot develops and thickens, each man's existence becomes inextricably linked to the fortunes of the other two, and all three are drawn in to a web of deceit and malevolent betrayal which has them confront their own personal darkness. As their paths cross time and again, they have to help each other out to survive the mill that is the world around them. Caught up in the morass of race riots, Teamster strongarm tactics, Mickey Cohen's mobsters, Hollywood wash-ups and socialist sympathizers. Whores, corrupt 'badges' and drug trafficking. In this world, only the brutal and lucky survive. The Big Nowhere is, for me, the book which really kicked Ellroy's LA Quartet into gear. The intricate detail of the plot will leave you gasping for breath. This book grabs you by the balls and drags you pell-mell from start to finish. There are so many twists, beautiful feints that you have to be sharp to spot the clues to the book's whodunit elements, let alone piece them together. The depictions of violence are graphic by necessity. This is no holiday camp. This is life as it was, and still is today, in the world of the corrupt and the criminal. I cannot overstate quite how influential this book has been, even more so in my opinion than its more famous predecessor and successor (The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential respectively). The noir and crime genres deserve a book like this and it is absolutely essential reading for anyone with even a passing interest in either. Don't just take my word for it. Read it, and be prepared for a literary rush quite unlike anything else. |
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