Hollywood Nocturnes - Hardcover

Ellroy, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1883402549 ISBN 13: 9781883402549

Publisher: Otto Penzler Books, 1994

Synopsis

Presents six stories that take place in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1959

About this title

Reviews

Ellroy's clipped and compelling noir realism, so effectively plied in such novels as L.A . Confidential and The Black Dahlia , shows itself to comparable advantage in short form here. The pick of the collection is "Dick Contino's Blues," the longest of the six previously published stories. Adrift in the hazy Hollywood '50s, accordion king Contino wades through nightclub gigs, broads, scandal and auto shows while saving a girl from "pinko" influences and from a publicity-grabbing fake kidnapping that unfortunately coincides with a serial killer's rampage-in-progress. Ellroy's rat-a-tat style expands slightly in "High Darktown," where an L.A. cop and former boxer follows an old enemy to a brutally violent resolution--while most of L.A. celebrates the end of WW II. In a foreword that exhibits the same high-heat style, Ellroy refers to the uneasy realities that underscore his prose, including his mother's unsolved 1958 murder in the City of Angels. Ellroy's narratives and approach aren't likely to please fans of clever-cat or subtle-English-spinster cozies, but he's required reading for those who take their crime fiction gritty, dark and a few degrees below boiling.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ellroy marks time between installments of his outsized LA saga with a slender collection of crime fiction--a novella and five stories (1986-94)--all reeking of his trademark corruption and stylistic flamboyance. Readers impatient with Ellroy's indulgently telegraphic prose in L.A. Confidential (1990) and White Jazz (1992) may be surprised to find that the most recent (and excessive) of these stories, the substantial ``Dick Contino's Blues,'' is the strongest. Its honky- tonk accordionist hero, introduced in a could-be-factual prologue, ``Out of the Past,'' tries to boost his stalled movie career by arranging to have himself and starlet Chrissy Staples kidnapped- -then watches the hoax spin dangerously out of control when waves of hoods, capped by the fearsome Whipcord Strangler, muscle in on the action, making for a scary, funny, bluesy climax. The other stories, as you'd expect, are all content with a narrower range of effects. In the routine crime story ``High Darktown,'' Sgt. Lee Blanchard goes after a pair of liquor store thieves just out of prison and hot for his scalp. Blanchard's back in the offbeat ``Dial Axminster 6-400,'' paired with Davis Evans, a hard-nosed cop who goes after a trio of violent kidnappers in the hope of repossessing their two-tone 1936 Auburn speedster. ``Since I Don't Have You'' asks why Gretchen Shoftel, a cozy friend of both mobster Mickey Cohen and billionaire Howard Hughes, was still working as a carhop just before she took off for parts unknown. In the foolishly likeable ``Gravy Train,'' Stan Klein works his way up from hard time to acting as minder for Basko, a dog who's just inherited $25 million. And ``Torch Number,'' the weakest and most sentimental of the batch, shows shamus Spade Hearns pursuing a torch singer who's gotten hold of a song his old love wrote and performed just for him. Nothing here like the power of Elroy's LA quartet; but all the stories are effective as genre pieces, and most of them equally interesting for their manic ambivalence toward postwar California. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The night is a central character of this aptly titled collection. Set mainly in the 1940s and 1950s, the stories are populated by cops, criminals, floozies, hustlers, and zootsuited wiseguys who bring to mind black-and-white B movies and yellowed Police Gazettes. The hero of the longest piece is Dick Contino, the accordion-playing, benny-popping star of the drive-in classic Daddy-O. On the way to starring in this epic, Contino encounters the police officer father of a luscious teenaged tease, a down-and-out producer who nurses his weak heart with Cheese Whiz and crackers, and a psycho who is terrorizing the denizens of Tinseltown's lovers' lanes. The other stories in the collection cover much the same territory and seem to be ideas that didn't quite make it to the novel stage. A good introduction to one of crime fiction's grittier masters.
Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Otto Penzler Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1883402549
• ISBN 13: 9781883402549
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 229