The Big Nowhere
 First edition cover | |
| Author | James Ellroy |
|---|---|
| Cover artist |
Jacket design by Barbara Buck Jacket illustration by Stephen Peringer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | L.A. Quartet |
| Genre | Crime fiction, noir, historical fiction |
| Publisher | The Mysterious Press |
Publication date | September 1988 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & paperback) and audio cassette |
| Pages | 406 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-89296-283-6 (first edition, hardcover) |
| OCLC | 17768709 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3555.L6274 B5 1988 |
| Preceded by | The Black Dahlia (1987) |
| Followed by | L.A. Confidential (1990) |
The Big Nowhere is a 1988 crime fiction novel by James Ellroy, the second of the L.A. Quartet, a series of novels set in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles. James Ellroy dedicated The Big Nowhere "To Glenda Revelle". The epigraph for The Big Nowhere is a passage from a novel; "It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness".
Plot
The plot is about three characters; L.A. Deputy Sheriff Danny Upshaw is trying to capture a brutal sex murderer whilst participating, somewhat reluctantly, in a scheme to expose communists in Hollywood. Turner "Buzz" Meeks, a disgraced former cop, is now working for millionaire Howard Hughes and gangster Mickey Cohen. LAPD lieutenant Malcolm "Mal" Considine, involved in a bitter child custody case, tries with varying success to do the right things in an environment of deception, paranoia and brutality. The story takes place in the aftermath of the notorious Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the resultant Zoot Suit Riots.
While the novel mocks opportunistic Red-baiting as a scam to oust organized labor, which benefited political careers and the fortunes of movie studio executives and mobsters, Ellroy is no easier on the film colony's communists and fellow travelers, many of whom he depicts as decadent hypocrites, easily compromised into "naming names" to hide their dirty secrets. As with most of Ellroy's fiction, he liberally employs the brutal slang of the times. Gays are "fruits", "homos", "nances"; black people are "boogies" and "jigs" and their neighborhoods are all "Niggertown".
Reception
The Big Nowhere received many positive reviews. Detroit News said, "THE BIG NOWHERE is a stunner....It's a huge, sprawling canvas of postwar Los Angeles as a black hole. It's Hieronymus Bosch between hard covers, taking up where film noir left off as it introduces a trio of warped, cynical cops hopping aboard the Red Scare bandwagon." Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A., praised the book, saying, "THE BIG NOWHERE is a startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. Through the eyes of some unforgettable, two-fisted cops we are taken from the Katydid Club to the Sunset Strip where the legendary crimelord Mickey Cohen buys the drinks...and the D.A. This is a compelling piece." Rave Reviews wrote, "James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia rocked the literary world last year. Now he's back with an even more powerful and compelling novel of greed, dark passion, and murder....James Ellroy has gone from one of the most impressive crime writers of the 1980s to a major literary voice of the twentieth century. THE BIG NOWHERE is a masterpiece-a powerful and disturbing novel no one should miss." While "The Big Nowhere" was praised for being engrossing and atmospheric,[1] it was also criticized for the "unrelenting negative stereotypes" depicted in the gay and minority characters.[2] The Big Nowhere also won Ellroy the Prix Mystère Award, in 1990.
References
- ↑ Gross, John (9 September 1988). "Books of The Times: A Nondescript Victim, and Los Angeles Shames". New York Times. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
- ↑ Schulman, Sarah (9 October 1988). "CRIME/MYSTERY; BIGOTS AND BASHERS". New York Times. Retrieved 3 September 2012.