Overview

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • 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.

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Reviews

“When [Ellroy is] on, as he is in his new, Marilyn Monroe-centered book The Enchanters, a sort of fever takes hold of the reader. Fact, fiction and conspiracy blur together until you can’t tell which is which, and you almost cease to care. The meticulous detail accumulates with a reportorial verve, each small action adding to the big picture. You start to see historical figures — be it Monroe, Bobby Kennedy or Ellroy’s antihero, a hopped-up mess of an off-the-books LAPD heavy named Freddy Otash — in a harsh new light. The experience might not be pleasant, but it is undoubtedly memorable. . . . This is ... Ellroy. The fever dream and the undiluted sleaze, in which he is far from the only crime novelist to indulge. Here, however, he’s messing with an icon (not to mention two popular political figures who met tragic deaths). The transgressions feel more severe, and, it must be said, more exciting. You might not want to live in Ellroy Land, but The Enchanters makes for a pretty wild visit.” —The Los Angeles Times “The ‘demon dog of American Letters’ bounds back into view with The Enchanters. . . . Likability can be boring, and Ellroy is a modern master of making his characters interesting instead of nice. . . . The pace is hold-onto-your-hat fast. . . . Ellroy has long been the finest tour guide of America’s most glittering gutters, ruthless in his examination of the muck on the floors of the golden cages. . . . The world of The Enchanters slips seamlessly into the Ellroy universe, the smeared mirror of realities past. . . . Where some writers might light a match to illuminate their way through a chapter, Ellroy takes a flamethrower. Full on, all the time—a style that is intensely, unequivocally, unapologetically his. . . . The place is L.A., and feels like it. The time is 1962, and feels like it. The scene is Hollywood—the stars and hangers-on—and feels like it. . . . Is The Enchanters anywhere close to the truth? Does it matter? A work of fiction needs to create a world that’s consistently convincing, and The Enchanters scores there, reality be damned. . . . The book is razor-sharp, rocket-fast, and always engaging. . . . Monroe and the Kennedys is hardly virgin territory, but Ellroy’s playing on the edges of it makes the novel a fresh read. The Enchanters serves as confirmation of elevation back toward past glories. . . . The demon dog is back ripping throats out.” —Air Mail “[A] lush, manic novelization of Marilyn Monroe’s death and all that was hushed up around it. . . . Underbellies don’t come any seamier than this. . . . Ellroy’s rat-a-tat sleaze is pitch-perfect.” —Harper’s Magazine “Indisputable fact: Marilyn Monroe died August 4, 1962. Questionable theories: was it suicide or murder? A case can be made for either, which Ellroy does with his signature jazzy aplomb in his ongoing quest to expose L.A.’s spongy underbelly via its most notorious scandals. . . . Ellroy’s lingo-laden, juiced and jived historical police procedurals are always a trip worth taking.” —Booklist [starred review] “Real-life LAPD officer turned private detective Fred Otash narrates Ellroy’s sprawling follow-up to 2022’s Widespread Panic. It’s another opportunity for the author to showcase his encyclopedic knowledge of mid-century Hollywood: the plot kicks off in the summer of 1962 when Otash is hired to dig up dirt on the recently deceased Marilyn Monroe by the unholy trinity of Jimmy Hoffa, JFK, and the LAPD. . . . Ellroy masterfully orchestrates his vast array of subplots to create a tour de force of vibe and atmosphere. That ambience, plus his signature jazzy turns of phrase, will thrill longtime fans. . . . Fascinating … a hell of a ride.”  —Publishers Weekly “A descent into the conspiracy hellhole of Hollywood in the early 1960s. Within the dirty fun of Ellroy's fiction, all sorts of lines continue to blur. There is little distinction between characters taken from so-called real life and inventions from the novelist’s fevered imagination. Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, and J. Edgar Hoover were all real people, of course, before they became Ellroy characters. So was protagonist Freddy Otash, the rogue cop who subsequently dug up dirt on celebrities for the scandal-sheet Confidential, though he has become better known as a figure in Ellroy’s fiction. As for the lines between good and bad and innocent and guilty, they simply don’t exist here. The cops are as crooked as the crooks, maybe more so, and guilt is a matter of degree. . . . The climax might well leave the reader as breathless as Ellroy’s prose.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Real-life LAPD officer turned private detective Fred Otash narrates Ellroy’s sprawling follow-up to 2022’s Widespread Panic. It’s another opportunity for the author to showcase his encyclopedic knowledge of mid-century Hollywood: the plot kicks off in the summer of 1962 when Otash is hired to dig up dirt on the recently deceased Marilyn Monroe by the unholy trinity of Jimmy Hoffa, JFK, and the LAPD. . . . Ellroy masterfully orchestrates his vast array of subplots to create a tour de force of vibe and atmosphere. That ambience, plus his signature jazzy turns of phrase, will thrill longtime fans. . . . Fascinating … a hell of a ride.”  —Publishers Weekly “A descent into the conspiracy hellhole of Hollywood in the early 1960s. Within the dirty fun of Ellroy's fiction, all sorts of lines continue to blur. There is little distinction between characters taken from so-called real life and inventions from the novelist’s fevered imagination. Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, and J. Edgar Hoover were all real people, of course, before they became Ellroy characters. So was protagonist Freddy Otash, the rogue cop who subsequently dug up dirt on celebrities for the scandal-sheet Confidential, though he has become better known as a figure in Ellroy’s fiction. As for the lines between good and bad and innocent and guilty, they simply don’t exist here. The cops are as crooked as the crooks, maybe more so, and guilt is a matter of degree. . . . The climax might well leave the reader as breathless as Ellroy’s prose.” —Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover, and the L.A. Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He lives in Colorado.

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