Blog this item

Blood's A Rover

By James Ellroy

(16)

| Others | 9780679403937

Like Blood's A Rover?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Critics

Blood's a Rover, By James Ellroy

This is a stonking, powerful, masculine beast of a book. The story involves the FBI, Black Power groups, Republicans, Democrats, mobsters, Communists, white supremacists, Mormons, Nixon, Hoover, Liston and a gigantic cast of informers, infiltrators, ... (read full critics)

independent published on Sun, 12 Dec 2010

Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy

The title of James Ellroy's latest novel is taken from AE Housman's poem "Reveille", a very English meditation on life's brevity. Four lines from the poem also provide the book's epigraph. Discovering that Ellroy digs Housman is one of the few surpri ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

See all critics

2 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

Started reading Blood's A Rover immediately after finishing The Cold Six Thousand, and nearly 7 years after American Tabloid.
Despite not having JFK, Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King's assassination to anchor the novel, Blood A Rover manages to have a stronger narrative drive than The Cold Six ... (continue)

Started reading Blood's A Rover immediately after finishing The Cold Six Thousand, and nearly 7 years after American Tabloid.
Despite not having JFK, Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King's assassination to anchor the novel, Blood A Rover manages to have a stronger narrative drive than The Cold Six Thousand. I think this is because the novel begins with an armed robbery, and readers are curious about this crime and the connection to the key characters. The Cold Six Thousand lacked such a narrative device and thus felt less driven.
Blood's A Rover also contains the strongest female characters I've read in Ellroy's novels (LA Quartest and the Underworld Trilogy). Sure, these female characters are quite macho, but this still offers some change in the novel.
In terms of language and style, Ellroy has tamed back the hyper elliptical style in The Cold Six Thousand for slightly more "mainstream" sentences in Blood's A Rover. Ellroy's short bursts of sentences never bothered me, but I know a few friends who've had issues with it. The police / agent jargon is still present but slightly more manageable if you've gotten this far in the series.
A fitting climax to an outstanding trilogy. Very readable and thrilling.

Is this helpful?

Jubei said on Apr 5, 2010 | Add your feedback

the trilogy ends with a book that resembles (and repeats) The cold 6k: the style is the same, the characters are always 6-feet-3 and muscular, the ellroy jargon is in place and everything runs smooth and tough right til the end.unfortunately, Blood's a rover reads like the 2nd par ... (continue)

the trilogy ends with a book that resembles (and repeats) The cold 6k: the style is the same, the characters are always 6-feet-3 and muscular, the ellroy jargon is in place and everything runs smooth and tough right til the end.unfortunately, Blood's a rover reads like the 2nd part of 6k, not like a new original novel in itself (like its two predecessors) and the impression is that ellroy could have done a much better job of it all if he only had focused less on slang and fantapolitics, and more on the individual perspective of the many (and interesting) protagonists.the last parts (V and VI) of the novel are the best: the pace somehow slackens and the meaning finally emerges.

Is this helpful?

crus said on Nov 1, 2009 | Add your feedback