Product Description

This work is set in 1950s, Los Angeles. The City of Angels has become the city of the Angel of Death. Communist witch-hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a malestrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12611 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

New York Times
'Ellroy is the author of some of the most powerful crime novels ever written'

About the Author
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed LA Quartet, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the first two parts of his Underworld USA trilogy, American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand which were both Sunday Times bestsellers.

Customer Reviews

Ah, Grand.
I started 'The Big Nowhere' about a fortnight after finishing 'The Black Dahlia'. This is fiction at its best. The characterisation is superb, the sense of impending doom inescapable and the tension palpable. I think that this book narrowly beats L.A. Confidential in terms of entertainment and plot, and only narrowly fails to rank alongside the Black Dahlia. The Upshaw character is every bit as vivid as the main characters in the Black Dahlia and Clandestine, and by the end of the book Considine and even the initially dispicable Meeks have set themselves up as tragic heroes. A must read book.

Remarkable. So much moer than just a crime novel.
I chose this as the first Ellroy to read and could not have been more pleased. I am now looking to buy the whole set based on this experience.

What a great story -- muscular prose, rat-tat-tat dialogue. Amazing.
The depth and breadth of the characters on display here is startling; I found myself with a person's name on my mind -- trying to put a face and a place to the name -- only to realise it was actually a 'person' from this book.

If, like me, the only other crime books you have read were the traditional 'hard boiled' detective novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett et al, be prepared for a shock. This is not as out-there as Paul Auster's 'City of Glass' (from 'The New York Trilogy') but no less compelling.
Everything about this book is more robust, more immediate .. more 'modern', if you like .. but still evokes a similar sense of 30's - 50's USA in general and Hollywood sleaze in particular.

Gripping stuff!

10/10

Expanding Ellroy's horizons
Forget The Black Dahlia - this is the first of Ellroy's newer, more ambitious books. While Dahlia may have carried him into marrying true crime with crime fiction, with The Big Nowhere he makes the more important move into multiple protagonists, which allows for one of the greatest plot devices of his later works - but I won't tell you what it is in case you haven't read it. The shock when reading the climax of the second section for the first time is a rare and incredible feeling when reading a book, and this was Ellroy's first try.

The Big Nowhere is also tied far more strongly to LA Confidential and White Jazz (the latter half of the LA Quartet) than Dahlia, fully involving the reader in the heroin conspiracy and introducing Dudley Smith properly for the first time since the earlier, far less impressive novel Clandestine.

If you're reading Ellroy's books sequentially, you're in for a treat. This is where the pace really picks up.