El detective Fritz Brown, un ex alcohólico obsesionado con la música clásica, especialmente la de Beethoven, no es un detective convencional: le echaron de la policía de Los Ángeles hace años y todavía tiene que moverse a veces al borde de la ley para salir adelante. Brown tiene una manera muy peculiar de llevar sus casos. Un estrafalario caddie de golf con pinta de mendigo pero mucho dinero, por ejemplo, le ofrece mil dolares para que vigile unos días al rico peletero judío con el que vive su hermana. Pero ella resulta ser muy atractiva, y una apasionada del violoncelo, además, y Brown decide seguirla también a ella e investigar de donde saca su extraño cliente tanto dinero...

This is the 10th Ellroy I've read but I've only listed 2 on Goodreads so far & only given one of them a very quickie, very inadequate 'review'. Ellroy deserves better - & probably gets it elsewhere - it's not like he's a neglected writer.

When the movie "L.A. Confidential" came out I thought it was the only Noir movie I'd seen in recent yrs that measured up to what made the original noir interesting in the 1st place. But I didn't know it was written by Ellroy then. It wasn't until many yrs later that I started reading him. &, yes, he's utterly great. As I've written elsewhere, I consider him to be one of the 4 greatest crime fiction writers. The other 3 being Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, & Patricia Highsmith. Then again, I don't read that much crime fiction writing so maybe there's far more great stuff out there than I know of.

This is the earliest Ellroy I've read yet. He wd've been, what?, in his early 30s when he wrote it? It's intense & wise & grim but, thank goodness?, not nearly as brutal as his later work (but still very brutal). For me, this is the 1st thing I've read by him in wch his writing still has a taste of his predecessors - in particular, Raymond Chandler. In fact, somewhat to my surprise, his detective character, Fritz Brown, even references Chandler's most famous detective:

"The flat finished stucco walls, ratty Persian carpets in the hallway and mahogany doors almost had me convinced it was 1938 and that my fictional predecessor Philip Marlowe was about to confront me with a wisecrack."

Not that that was an especially important moment in the bk or anything - I just found it interesting that Ellroy wd even tip his hat, so to speak. & the writing is great - as w/ the best of 'pulp' fiction this was a page-turner extraordinaire. I was completely engrossed. & if this had been written by Chandler, perhaps some of the at-1st-apparently-nice characters wd've turned out to be even more vicious than anyone else. But Ellroy surprises the reader here by making that NOT SO.

Anyone who reads crime fiction shd read Ellroy. He exemplifies "hard-boiled". ( )

Between 20o3 and 2008, I went through a phase where I thought James Ellroy was the best living novelist. I loved his schtick so much that my own writing--fiction or non--read like a pastiche of Ellroy's telegraphic style. While I still appreciate him (most of his novels survived the various pre-/post-moving book culls I made), I feel like I've calmed down and grown up, I guess? At the very least, his flaws--which were always there--have become really apparent, so much so that I just don't have the energy or heart to dive back into his novels again.

But I've had Brown's Requiem, his 1980 debut, on my "unread" shelf for nearly a decade, and I just grabbed it on a whim and dived in (via audiobook). From page one, Brown's Requiem reads like a trial run for every other book Ellroy has written. It's all here: an obsessed protagonist; a hilariously over-complicated plot; lots of focus on classical music as "good music"; gonzo violence (including the good ol' "empty gun into someone's face" deal that Ellroy uses all of the time); and so on. Fritz Brown is, however, not as insanely racist as almost every other Ellroy protagonist, and he even defends minorities in a few spots...though these moments feel really forced.

The writing is cleaner and more traditional than Ellroy's later books, but his staccato pacing is still here. The book made me remember why I liked Ellroy so much, but it also reminded me why I no longer obsess over him. The guy has basically been writing the same book over and over from this point on--he's rehashing the same worldview that's guided him since his mom's murder, and I just have a hard time with it these days. ( )

Raymond Chandler, he isn't. The book is well written if you like this sort of thing but a bit too violent for my taste. ( )

Two weeks before the Utopia Club was consumed by an arsonist's torch, private investigator and car repossessor Fritz Brown was having a drink there when the man next to him spilled his drink in Fritz's lap. The man immediately apologized. Re cognition of that man was to be the key unraveling a mystery almost ten years later.

Fritz Brown is James Ellroy's first creation and a worthy successor to Philip Marlowe. Brown is an ex-cop, dismissed from the L.A.P.D. for having broken the legs of the Vice Department's favorite snitch. Brown was incensed that the department continued to support the informer, even after learning of the man's pedophilic practices.

Brown is hired by a sadist to dig up dirt on his sister's "boyfriend." Soon he is mired in murder, arson, swindles, police corruption, and enough perversion to keep an entire squad of detectives busy. Brown has to face his own demons before resolving the crime in his own extra-legal fashion.

I recommend listening to Mahler's Second Symphony while reading this fast-paced novel. It's not called the Resurrection Symphony for nothing. ( )