The cool thing about this being the third in the YA hacktivist series is this has the benefit of hindsight in both the real world divergence from its fiction, as well as the events of previous books also having aged for a while. The result, I think, actually augments the previous books for me because I did feel they were slightly idyllic—but I read them this year, not when they were published. And this book confronts those notions while also nurturing, through a different tactic, the same ethos found particularly in the first book. Where kids were educating each other on how to not be surveilled and technology was in a place where they could pretty much mask themselves. Today, that’s not really the case. If you’re under targeted surveillance… it’s pretty much over. You’ll slip up at some point. It is not a final solution, or even a realistic one; doubly so for the average consumer.

But the techniques and reasons to shirk the surveillance state exist still, and perhaps for even more reason, because now the people who read these books when young, as the author mentions in the afterward, are now working in tech sector jobs and can Vote! This storyline reflects the growing up and changes the world of Marcus has undergone, but it centres the mmm… not quite villain who pops up in the last two - but morally compromised and the opposite in rhetoric to Marcus, pretty much. This was the exact right book for this series and really works to retrofit the previous books, as we get a duel timeline situation with her past, as well as the moral quandaries she still navigates.

She’s smart, she’s not too far from other girls but certainly badass. And she’s got the viewpoint I think many people in the sector will have doing her work, so her obstacle and quandary is very relatable. Again, though, the writing is certainly YA and as such feels like it explains things very well, but often repeatedly—or more like… dumbed down after it just explained something. It’s a technique you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read the previous books. There will be a technical explanation that has good information design and then the person who already understands the thing clearly, starts explaining it for a laymen. This sometimes is really helpful and sometimes really annoying. Together with the basic writing style, the character work and themes shine through, but the prose always feels, at its best, unobtrusive.

This was pretty idiosyncratic! A woman is put into a form of exile in a future ravaged by climate change, and the rest of the population, as far as they are concerned, lives on Garbage Island. A massive makeshift state where a kind of devolved language has taken place, and everyone is, literally (for good reason, it proves) called fuckwits. For daring to suggest that they not consume more fuel searching for an endless want, our protagonist suffers greatly: Anyone is “legally” allowed to hurt her but not kill her as punishment, unless she enters the actual island instead of remaining on an attached flotilla house type deal.

Rarely have I come across a protagonist so easily rooted for. And the audiobook actually seems like the best way to consume the book, as the narrator was just fantastic at creating a wide-eyed sense of endearing optimism, despite terrible circumstances. It’s not for people looking for a heavy plot, more for the exploration of a theme and the character work. It’s short, punchy, and had a fantastic ending. Had it been more meaty I think it could have been a 5 star read.

There’s a few reasons this doesn’t hold up well for me. One is how antiquated it is now; even as the author tries to straddle back and forth in the Mars man’s interactions with ideologues, even when the pendulum hits the seemingly progressive views, they are woefully, often laughably inadequate. Particularly around queer culture and the overt homophobia there, but also how misogynistic the expression of feminism is and, probably most damning, how monocultural it is.

The foreign man only exists as axiomatic strategy to interrogate western culture. The things the author isn’t interested in simply do not exist, despite the conceit and the progression of plot all but begging some self reflection at shoe-horning all of earth culture as, pretty much just America. It’s also baffling that language isn’t interrogated more, but why should English be, when the author is most interested in a masturbatory trolling of social constructs. He no doubt thought himself really smart at doing so too, since basically the entirety of it could be described as mansplaining every concept being (I very magnanimously label) interrogated”.

There’s a tweet I think about something that went something like, “If your entire personality is giving other people a hard time, know that you are exhausting.” That is how this book reads. It’s almost embarrassing to read, even when it’s good. Like watching a very antiquated dance being performed, even when it’s good it calls attention to itself.

It does have better prose work and dialogue than other master scifi books I’ve read lately, which forged what the genre is good at without paying attention to staples of the craft like character work, prose, and dialogue. So there is that. But, at best, it feels like these exist to venerate and remember notions we have long since internalized in younger generations. Asking people to imagine a time when this slight step forward in a culture so toxic and disgusting is a futile exercise imo.

I can’t understand what it was like before it was born anymore than I can attempt to understand the future. So if the only thing a book has the communication of those antiquated notions, then what good is it? It doesn’t have an interesting plot, most of it is a circle jerk of characters digressing in their dialogue. It’s not fun or funny. There are much better books doing what it does. So, really, it’s for the people who read it when they were young and it moved them and made them thought about things differently. When they’re gone, they should be too.

This time around we are looking at the American reaction in the police mover-and-shakers as a result of Pearl Harbour. Betty Davis and other actors, and the administration leaning on the police too. All on the same day as a gruesome murder (as you might expect) of a Japanese family in a seemingly ritualistic way.

Even as the pressure for it to be solved vacillates, as the public loves to rally against Japanese—but really all Asian people, since they don’t care to tell the difference at the best of times, except for when they’re slinging slurs—the case ends up owning the headspace of the players from a multifaceted way. Some see it as a point of exploitation, to fan the flames. Others to put it to bed with a manufactured killer. But to probably the “main” protagonist, a Japanese man himself, and the best forensics expert on the force, the case is a splinter in the mind. Something about it needles him and he just won’t let it go. And, of course, pulling on that thread is the A plot.

On the side, Dudley returns. Actually, I was. A bit exasperated by this (at first). But the fleshing out of this character is so well done I really didn’t mind. We finally understand how and why Dudley functions as he does, and how he interacts with women. A deft touch strings together that B plot with the A.

Everything wraps together very well. And boy, Ellroy’s apoplectic approach reaching to stars like Davis and HH and the first main perspective from a shrewd and manipulative woman who takes a while to really show what she’s actually after. In the start she functions more like a grenade than a character - but I liked that a lot. But I’m glad she became more complex. War profiteering in the states is just a phenomenal thing to put under the lens though. It’s far more interesting to me than the left - right political dance, and how it intersects with everyone gave the added bonus that most of these alt history Ellroy books do, which is actually educate you even as it’s hyperbolic and dramatic around the fictional elements.

The narrative shifts to a kind of bookended first person, for this one. I can’t deny the staccato prose do sing sometimes, but, off the back of Confidential, it feels like Ellroy is attempting something new, which makes it sophomoric in some respects.

The joy of Confidential, for me, was how masterful the plotting was and how the prose work elucidates each step from a macro perspective. In this one, we’re pigeon holed and as a result the plot feels like it’s spinning wheels until everything just starts popping off and the solipsism of our protagonist has caused him to miss crucial details. And we have too, as readers, since we are confined. I can see why the style would switch to something like this, but it does feel less gratifying to read off the back of probably a perfect, or near perfect novel of this same type, with some of the same characters.

It’s still worth reading to see the conclusion, such as it is, between the characters that make it through to this one. In many ways the plot is as intricate as the others, it just feels less earned because it’s sprung on you. There’s some fun being locked into, in many ways, a non-protagonist protagonist. It feeds into the paranoia and the being in a brain as uninformed as the reader. It’s frenetic and may just be the least crap person in the story, rather than a traditional protagonist, which has never existed in these books. It’s just factions and machinations smashing together, and our little characters being embroiled in it.

I wasn’t dissatisfied with the ending, but it does seem like, from a craft perspective at least, to be the weakest. I’m curious to see if this prose style and perspective transfers into later works as well. Maybe a more refined version of this will be better than the heights of this series. Maybe.

As viewed from a view at the top, this quartet is truly an achievement. I think there distinctions could also be viewed as two sets of duologies, as plenty of crossover occurs in both. As an alternate history reimagining and condemnation of the institutions erected for the corrupt and as bad as criminals, the Justice apparatus is as twisted, defunct, and disgusting as the too-graphic depravity that exists in all of the novels.

There are no heroes. Only less terrible protagonists, often plummeting into uncontrolled descents we can’t help but watch in awe of. We sometimes hope they don’t crash, but there’s no pulling up from these particular spins. Surviving the crash is beside the point, the trajectory and human error is what is predominantly on display, when viewing the books as a whole.

There’s no glossy Hollywoodization, though it is heavily stylized and dramatized. Rather, it’s about showing just how poorly humanity serves the best of humanity, and what it actually nurtures and feeds, despite propaganda we rear ourselves on. It also doesn’t have answers for the fix. New generations of cops emerge throughout, only to be co-opted into new eras of new stains.

It’s pointless to pretend we aren’t fascinated by the darkness and winding roads. But it is equally pointless to pretend like everything is okay when the destruction caused by the people we seed authority to is not actually Good, by any means.

In this particular edition I’ll note the introduction is not great, and even spoils White Fuzz a bit. There’s better articles on why these books are so well regarded. Mostly, it’s just a small summation of what occurs and the subject matter, aside from the major spoiler, self admitted in the text. The Chronology is interesting and the formatting is nice and clean, though the type is somewhat small. It’s a nice edition and, for me, was the most cost effective way to get them all, anyway.

As to the audiobooks I’ve tried of these, no narrator really nails the prose style and dialogue from large casts. It’d be a huge task and with 3-4 different narrators, none of them were better than how it reads on the page.

Probably the book most people are familiar with due to the fantastic adaptation. But the book is better, unsurprisingly. Maybe I’ve acclimated to Ellroy’s style, but everything about this really clicked for me. It’s intricately plotted, the style really pops off the page, the way the department twists and typed a couple of the characters, and the way the tension from the last book bleeds into the edges, really making me wait for the shoe to drop. And when it does, boy does it drop.

Strangely, while this also meanders, everything feels more germane too, as the case is so centrally tied to the cops involved, it drives them in ways they aren’t even aware of—but the reader is. Again, Ellroy shows how disgusted he is with power and what it does to a person, and how that plus into how “justice” works in society. This time, the ramifications are like dominos that perfectly fall. There is always a an over annunciation of people having to violate their identities to function, feeding back into the cycle of boom-bust, again hit harder with Hush-Hush Magazine hitting the spectacle of death and debauchery.

The way The Big Nowhere, and to some extent, The Black Dahlia, roll into this is pretty fantastic. A few of the character arcs are pitch perfect, specifically Dudley. But there’s a weight from what came before landing squarely on the shoulders of the new folks too. I have a feeling reading it as one book in this bindup is really the way to go.

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.

Like the first LA Quartet, these seem to work very nicely as duologies. I have been thinking on what it would be like to read these chronologically in the fiction. There are certainly characters and events in the future that augment the experience. After all, the full Dudley arc now includes these two books but take place before them. Maybe on a reread.

This book is even more ambitious I think. The satire and parody work, coupled with three ongoing investigations that trickle down into one, with characters in the later original quartet appearing as well. It’s certainly exceptional. Even when the characters digress into the same jokes and circle jerking and the filtering down to raw, brass tax motivations that comes from imbibing all manner of drugs 24/7. And as soon as someone gets close to the truth, of course Ellroy has a bullseye set on them. One of the rare times the historical fiction abides by the rule of law: what is historically known about any known quantities.

And then the real joke comes at the macro level. Because of course these people recycle and regurgitate the same jokes, same talking points, same arguments. You’ll hear, “Hung like a cashew” about a billion times and you won’t hear a kind word from any of these people, because Ellroy has contempt for absolutely everyone. And whether I googled Betty Davis or Howard Hughes or Orson Welles, the stuff that seems verifiable actually seems to check out. And so Ellroy peels back the paint to show the rank exterior.

It’s an odd, but gripping experience, not cheering for literally anyone at all, just watching the people with all the power and authority corrupt just about anything they can get ahold of. And so the cycle continues. Any kind of good gets stomped right out, like a butt on the ground.

This brings to a close everything pretty perfectly, but I do kind of hate Piper and don’t think she contributed all that much of substance. It’s too bad because I think with a different antagonist this would have continued the 5 star streak. Regardless, excited to continue on to the Dreamer Trilogy, and the final, recently released book in that trilogy~~