The Cold Six Thousand

Zusatztext “Ellroy rips into American culture like a chainsaw in an abbatoir. . . . Pick it up if you dare; put it down if you can.” – Time “A wild ride. . . . An American political underbelly teeming with conspiracy and crime. . . . So hard-boiled you could chip a tooth on it.” –The New York Times Book Review “A ripping read....the book is pure testosterone.” –The Plain Dealer “A great and terrible book about a great and terrible time in America.” – The Village Voice Informationen zum Autor James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz, and the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover. These seven novels have won numerous honors and were international best sellers. He is also the author of two collections, Crime Wave and Destination: Morgue! and two memoirs My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse .  Ellroy currently lives in Denver, Colorado. www.jamesellroy.net Klappentext The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. In this savagely audacious novel, James Ellroy plants a pipe bomb under the America in the 1960s, lights the fuse, and watches the shrapnel fly. On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their job: to clean up the JFK hit's loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop with family ties to the lunatic right; Ward J. Littell, a defrocked FBI man turned underworld mouthpiece; and Pete Bondurant, a dope-runner and hit-man who serves as the mob's emissary to the anti-Castro underground. It goes bad from there. For the next five years these night-riders run a whirlwind of plots and counter-plots: Howard Hughes's takeover of Vegas, J. Edgar Hoover's war against the civil rights movement, the heroin trade in Vietnam, and the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Wilder than L. A. Confidential, more devastating than American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand establishes Ellroy as one of our most fearless novelists. Leseprobe Chapter 1 Part I EXTRADITION November 22-25, 1963 1 Wayne Tedrow Jr. (Dallas, 11/22/63) They sent him to Dallas to kill a nigger pimp named Wendell Durfee. He wasn't sure he could do it. The Casino Operators Council flew him. They supplied first-class fare. They tapped their slush fund. They greased him. They fed him six cold. Nobody said it: Kill that coon. Do it good. Take our hit fee. The flight ran smooth. A stew served drinks. She saw his gun. She played up. She asked dumb questions. He said he worked Vegas PD. He ran the intel squad. He built files and logged information. She loved it. She swooned. "Hon, what you doin' in Dallas?" He told her. A Negro shivved a twenty-one dealer. The dealer lost an eye. The Negro booked to Big D. She loved it. She brought him highballs. He omitted details. The dealer provoked the attack. The council issued the contract-death for ADW Two. The preflight pep talk. Lieutenant Buddy Fritsch: "I don't have to tell you what we expect, son. And I don't have to add that your father expects it, too." The stew played geisha girl. The stew fluffed her beehive. "What's your name?" "Wayne Tedrow." She whooped. "You just have to be Junior!" He looked through her. He doodled. He yawned. She fawned. She just loooooved his daddy. He flew with her oodles. She knew he was a Mormon wheel. She'd looove to know more. Wayne laid out Wayne Senior. He ran a kitchen-help union. He rigged low pay. He had coin. He had pull. He pushed right-wing tracts. He hobnobbed with fat cats. He knew J. Edgar Hoover...

Product details

• Authors: James Ellroy
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 11.06.2002
• EAN: 9780375727405
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72740-5
• No. of pages: 688
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 205 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Underworld USA Trilogy; Underworld USA Trilogy
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature