Ellroy makes you “root for the guys” (and women) who are often responsible for the murderous behaviour that gives the book its narrative propulsion. The crime classic about the assassination of JFK is far more concerned with the various shady characters who provide the narrative than the actual killing of the president.
He continues to haunt the story, James detailing his slow death with real power and emotion, particularly the horror of the foot injury that preceded it: “Every night you stomp down Babylon from the stage, your right boot fills near the brim with blood.” But by this point all those other voices have taken on so much personality of their own, we want to follow them too.Īnother comparable piece of writing is James Ellroy’s masterpiece American Tabloid. You get a broader sense of his psychological, economic, cultural and political impact – not to mention the conflicts and controversies that surround him.Īnd those other voices have their own fascination, so much so that, by the time Marley’s cancer lifts him out of the book halfway through, he feels like the peripheral figure. The result is a 600-page, fictional expansion on the principle that drove Gay Talese’s Esquire article Frank Sinatra Has a Cold: if you can’t get a direct quote from your subject, listen to everyone around him. It’s an effective way of dealing with a personality as well-known as Marley rather than run the risk of speaking for the reggae legend, James had everyone else speak about him instead.
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