The Big Nowhere

Mystery and thriller · Noir

Print length: 406 pagesMysterious Press, 1988

Description

Los Angeles carries the racial violence of the Sleepy Lagoon case and Zoot Suit riots into a new climate of anti-communist fear. Deputy sheriff Danny Upshaw pursues a series of brutal sex murders beyond the boundaries his department considers acceptable, while ex-cop Turner Meeks and LAPD lieutenant Malcolm Considine become entangled in an investigation of alleged communist activity in Hollywood. Their paths cross through informants, political ambition, institutional deceit, and private vulnerabilities that make honest police work nearly impossible. The Big Nowhere joins murder inquiry to ideological witch hunt, depicting a city where authorities readily convert prejudice into procedure and where each man’s concealed pressures threaten to distort what he is willing to see.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Dense · Dialogue-driven · Spare

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Bleak · Dark · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Braided · Linear

Focus

Atmosphere · Mystery · Plot

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

Crime and punishmentIdentityJusticePolitics and ideologyPowerRace and racism

About James Ellroy

James Ellroy is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and memoirist whose crime fiction turns modern history into a hard, compressed record of power and corruption. Since his first novel, Brown’s Requiem, a detective story published in 1981, he has moved from Los Angeles police narratives to a broader anatomy of American institutions and their underworld connections. The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz place compromised officers inside the violence and graft of midcentury Los Angeles; American Tabloid expands that terrain to the FBI, CIA, Mafia, and national politics. His prose is famously stripped down, favoring staccato sentences and omitted connective tissue, a method sharpened while cutting L.A. Confidential. Beneath that velocity lies extensive preparation: Ellroy writes longhand and builds outlines that can run to hundreds of pages. Across the work, investigations matter less as puzzles than as routes through ambition, institutional complicity, and the unstable boundary between law and crime.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Mysterious Press
Language: English
ISBN: 9780892962839

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.