A note on the audiobook: I do not recommend it that way. It’s not terrible, but it’s well short of how great the prose are on the page. It loses some of its qualities through the narrator, who just can’t pull off the cadence and verve.

Better than the first instalment in prose and complexity, and it’s just fascinating, this faux investigation into the red scare. It’s actually why it didn’t quite hit five stars for me, actually. Because of the expectations that are rather large at the onset, which veers into other corners of the various characters’ lives. Had it been able to do service on all fronts, this would have struck gold. To some degree it’s the style of the author, since the last book similarly takes a circuitous route to answers. But the retread seems more like old habits that need to be kicked, to me.

We have opportunities galore shaved away here. Lots of gamblers and toughs and hypocrites—the archetypes you’d expect after the first. And they’re aimed at a union with communist ties. Artificially, to protect the populace from the rhetoric. Actually, it’s the best option of ousting the reds from the movie pictures. It’s all business and capitalism and money. But these people, (not) surprisingly can’t manage their day-to-day.

One is hooked on a woman whose man will kill him and the woman in a heartbeat if he finds out. Another goes down a rabbit hole of snuff and he’s too green to keep things steady. Soon, the case consumes him and has him questioning aspects about his own identity. Who can they trust? who is the puppeteer?

In a similar setup to the first book, everything is third person with a sneer. Ellroy doesn’t deny how good the story is, but he is also always shows just how crappy even the best of these folks are. They’re racist, homophobic, single-serving, on a varying slider of corruptibility. It’s all power fantasies and it only gets more disturbing. And that kind of unflinching gaze is brings the reader into the drama and look at humanity at its worst. That’s what makes it so hard to look away: They are people at their worst, and who ends up paying for that? How does Justice function? What gets done and what doesn’t, and how does it get done, and what does that say about our society? That’s where these shine. The alt history that’s so on the nose that, in another way, it is more instructive than purported historical texts.