James Ellroy--Demon Dog of American Letters--goes straight to the
tragic heart of 1962 Hollywood with a wild riff on the Marilyn Monroe
death myth in an astonishing, behind-the-headlines crime epic.
Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat
wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped
LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker's looking for some getback. The
Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash.
The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope
fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim
"Opportunity is love." Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn
Monroe's death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that
only he has the guts and the brains to untangle. We are with him as he
tears through all those who block his path to the truth. We are with him
as he penetrates the faux-sunshine of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and the
shuck of Camelot. We are with him as he falters, and grasps for love
beyond opportunity. We are with him as he tracks Marilyn Monroe's
horrific last charade through a nightmare L.A. that he served to
create -- and as he confronts his complicity and his own raging madness.
It's the Summer of '62, baby. Freddy O's got a hot date with history.
The savage Sixties are ready to pop. It's just a shot away.
The Enchanters is a transcendent work of American popular fiction. It
is James Ellroy at his most crazed, brilliant, provocative, profanely
hilarious, and stop-your-heart tender. It is a luminous psychological
drama and an unparalleled thrill ride. It is, resoundingly, the great
American crime novel.
