In Clandestine, James Ellroy takes the reader inside the world of one ambitious cop. Fred Underhill is a young LAPD officer who cleverly dodged service in World War II and makes no bones about his desire to climb the rungs of the police department. He finagles and manipulates, breaks the law and justifies his actions, all in a quest to advance his career. His foibles are many, including an early penchant to pursue women for one night stands and a desire to maintain his golf game.
One of Underhill’s female conquests turns up dead and he notices a pattern in this and another murder. At this point the fuse is lit. Underhill goes beyond the law to catch a killer. In the process, he falls for an assistant district attorney, Lorna, who looms large in everything he does. He also encounters a future James Ellroy larger than life but entirely believeable character: Dudley Smith. Smith and his crew co-opt Underhill, leading him down the road of self-destruction at full speed. Underhill soon implodes as his case evaporates based on new evidence. He subsequently loses Lorna but never his desire to solve the case. Toward the end, the story goes on a rambling quest half way across the USA as Underhill, the crusader turned knight errant, redeems himself by ultimately catching the killer.
Where Clandestine excels is in the vividness of the characters. Underhill, his early partner, his commanding officer, his lovers, and his golf partners, all of them are drawn with the skill of a master. James Ellroy pulls no punches, dilutes no dialog, and reveals everything raw in the course of this story. At times, the emotionally intensity may seem overwrought, but the setting is 1950’s LA, a place where the bloom was off the rose and the thorns sharper than ever. Read, enjoy, and contemplate why other authors don’t measure up, especially the recent slew of flat, thinly worded mystery/thrillers that lack any measure of proper development. Ellroy is a master of the genre. This early example of his work proves the point.
The Bent Page 
Lost… In The Woods
Tana French takes the reader into the woods near the Irish town of Knocknaree. Some twenty years ago, two children disappeared, leaving one catatonic and lacking any memory of what happened. Present day, the surviving child, who adopts a different first name, is Rob Ryan, and he is a detective trying to solve another crime that has happened adjacent to the same patch of woods. Ryan and his two colleagues, Cassie and Sam, work hard to figure out who killed a local ballet prodigy. In the process, Ryan goes down a horrible version of memory lane without actually recalling enough of what happened to him to make sense. He runs afoul of his superior and Cassie in the process.
In The Woods succeeds as a character study, a deep look into Rob Ryan and the scars left by his childhood tragedy. He wrestles with relationships both personal and professional. He struggles to stay focused on his job while haunted by the past. He never seems to get any traction, eventually falling to pieces. Recovering, he manages to catch a killer, but loses many things that matter in between. His descent to the edge of madness is compelling as much as it is frustrating for reasons mentioned next. As a crime story it works well, too, but only for the ballet prodigy case.
The trouble with this story is its lack of resolution. The set up is great, past and present colliding, but the reader is left holding the bag. For a sequel? For self-examination? It’s not exactly clear. I do look forward to the next installment with Cassie as the lead. Maybe she will keep it together long enough to tie up the loose ends, something important in this genre, something the author didn’t do for Rob Ryan.
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on August 4, 2011 at 11:17 am Leave a CommentTags: book review, Books, crime story, detective fiction, fiction, In The Woods, review, Tana French