The Enchanters

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Description

Los Angeles. Summer 1962. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. And Freddy-O is back. This is James Ellroy at his most crazed, brilliant, provocative and profanely hilarious Los Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer 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.

Reviews

Epic mashups of historical fact and filthy fantasy . . . no one does it better than Ellroy * The Times, 'Best new crime fiction for September 2023' *
This entire book is one gleefully violent foul-mouthed research note. Its vivid, gripping, surreal * Spectator *
No one captures the nightmare that lies behind the American dream better than the unforgettable Ellroy . . . This is the master of darkness at his incomparable best simply impossible to put down * Daily Mail *
Nobody does crime like James Ellroy . . . One of Ellroy's best works in years -- Dan Jones * Sunday Times *
One of the great American writers of our time * Los Angeles Times *
Ask me to name the best living novelist who's fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted, and paranoid . . . and it becomes simple: James Ellroy. If insanity illuminated by highly dangerous strokes of literary lightning is your thing, then Ellroy is your man -- Stephen King
James Ellroy is the American Dostoyevsky -- Joyce Carol Oates
Truly invigorating . . . demonically riveting -- Jake Kerridge * Telegraph *
Highly entertaining * Irish Independent *
Electrifying * Buzz Magazine *
If you like conspiracy theories youll relish James Ellroys brutal, unbelievably hard-boiled take on the death of Marilyn Monroe -- William Boyd * Daily Express *
I enjoyed The Enchanters, James Ellroy's sleazy, scabrous riff on the death of Marilyn Monroe -- Dan Jones * Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year *

Author Bio

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 is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Colorado.