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Summary: Revel in the joys of Dudley Smith's interogation technique.
Review: Any one who has read James Ellroy's so called L.A quartet (like my chiropractor or my friend Damien or this producer I know or this freak taxi driver I once met) is probably chafing at the bit to go back to the stomping ground of the men who were looking for Black Dahlia, Buzz Meeks and any one in the gang that ever accepted a kick back from Howard Hughes or Mickey "the kike". This like 'Dick Contino's Blues' is a secret extra gang member and deserves it's place on the shelf near BLACK DAHLIA, THE BIG NOWHERE, LA CONFIDENTIAL,AND WHITE JAZZ. Those of you who have read and survived the quartet will be happy to find a good cop bad cop book which resurrects cuddly Dudley Smith from his White Jazz early retirement. Keep writing please Mr Elroy- When I read your books I realise that in my life I have had too much of one thing - sleep. KR
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Summary: Different for Ellroy, but still a good read...
Review: I am in agreeance with the previous reviewer who stated that this book is relatively 'nice' compared with Ellroy's other books. The plot moves along nicely and only falters in its flashback segment to offer some explanation of why 'IT' all happened. A good book that is well worth a read... If you enjoyed other Ellroy novels then you won't be disappointed.
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Summary: One of my favorites....
Review: I read this book after reading "Dahlia", "Confidential", "Big Nowhere" and "Tabloid". And now, I'm almost finished with "Crime Wave" and it all makes sense. "Clandestine," if not his first, is definitely an early work and essential. All of the elements that Ellroy knew (at that time in his life) of his mother's death is in this book. READ THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Do you know what's wrong with that reader's voice ?
Review: Most of the James Ellroy's cops are mean, tough, cunning, crooked, dirty low lives. So the Reader's voice that was chosen to be as the 1st person in the book, starting all the sentences with an "I", playing himself as the dirty cop, that should be sound like a cop, a tough, mean, foxy guy with a tough, cold, heartless voice. To my deepest regret with a funny feeling, the voice of Mr. Jermy Gage is a total joke. His voice is so thin, so narrow, so shallow and so scholastically wrong. His voice is not a cop's voice in the least but a voice with pipe and eye glasses, a voice coming from the mouth of 150 pounds body weight, in short, a chicken's voice. I just couldn't keep listening to that funny voice which was definitely not a believable cop's voice. After trying so hard listened to that voice for 25 minutes, I just turned the recorder off and picked up the real book and just let my own inner voice to become that "I", that dirty, mean, tough, cunning cop, and survived page after page. Don't try to make the same fault as I did, it'd ruin your free and more realistic imagination.
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Summary: A Master Finding His Voice
Review: One of James Ellroy's first efforts, CLANDESTINE showcases a writing voice not yet matured into the staccato hipster prose of his L.A. quartet or the historical fiction of American Tabloid/The Cold Six Thousand. That said, it's still a great read (though the romantic sequences between Underhill and Lorna are a bit clunky). The last fifty pages are classic, non-stop page turners. The interrogation scenes with Dudley Smith, Underhill and Eddie Engels are Ellroy-esque and brutal, yet they lack the wit and cold intelligence of the interrogation scenes from L.A. Confidential. Lt. Dudley Smith is a monster, but not quite the cold, calculating beast he becomes in Ellroy's later masterpieces. For those not acquainted with the earlier works of James Ellroy, this one's a must. As I read this book, I could definitely see stronger beginnings of the voice that now makes Ellroy one of the world's very best.
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Summary: One of my favorites....
Review: One of my favorites of all of Ellroy's novels. It's an earlier work, but the book is extremely solid. I believe this is the first time we are introduced to The Victory Motel, Dudley Smith, and his groupies. Very entertaining. Some parts are almost gut-wrenching in their humanity. Much of the book is bittersweet. If you are a fan of Ellroy's better known works like LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia -- Clandestine will not disappoint...
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Summary: Dead Solid Imperfection... Ellroy Style
Review: One of the reasons I love James Ellroy is his unflinching, honest portrayal of what all humans are: flawed, to different degrees. CLANDESTINE, to me, is what begins the L.A. saga, and it is the only way to be introduced to one of Ellroy's best characters: The monster that is Dudley Smith. Many, it seems, felt the ending wrapped up too neatly or improbably, but it worked for me entirely. It's more than a warm-up for his best, BLACK DAHLIA, and stands on its own as noir. Ellroy shows us yet another facet of self-destruction redeemed in the nick of time so that at least SOME good can come from life's horrid injustices. On a final note, I must confess, I am a dog lover, and the addition of Night-Train was comically wonderful (read it, and you will know what I'm talking about). James, you've done it again!
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Summary: Dead Solid Imperfection... Ellroy Style
Review: One of the reasons I love James Ellroy is his unflinching, honest portrayal of what all humans are: flawed, to different degrees. CLANDESTINE, to me, is what begins the L.A. saga, and it is the only way to be introduced to one of Ellroy's best characters: The monster that is Dudley Smith. Many, it seems, felt the ending wrapped up too neatly or improbably, but it worked for me entirely. It's more than a warm-up for his best, BLACK DAHLIA, and stands on its own as noir. Ellroy shows us yet another facet of self-destruction redeemed in the nick of time so that at least SOME good can come from life's horrid injustices. On a final note, I must confess, I am a dog lover, and the addition of Night-Train was comically wonderful (read it, and you will know what I'm talking about). James, you've done it again!
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Summary: Do you know what's wrong with that reader's voice ?
Review: Second novel of James Ellroy, published in 1983, CLANDESTINE develops the themes already present in BROWN'S REQUIEM. Fred Underhill is a young talented cop who believes he has found some clues proving that a serial killer is at work in the Los Angeles area. We are in 1951, in the middle of the Korea war, and the americans see communists everywhere. In his mystical quest, Fred Underhill will meet Dudley Smith, a L.A.P.D. lieutenant who'll have the career we know under James Ellroy's pen. Smith or/and the author does have an obsession : the "Black Dahlia" mystery he has been unable to solve. It's the second time in two books that Ellroy evokes this affair that will give a few years later its name to one of James Ellroy's most known novels. Another recurrent Ellroy theme appearing in CLANDESTINE is the description of the death of one of the serial killer's victim, similar to the circumstances of the death of the writer's own mother. Fred Underhill is also a golf addict and a tormented human being who'll seek redemption during the five years he'll pass in order to solve the case he has discovered. I must confess that the last fifty pages of CLANDESTINE are so gripping that I couldn't leave the book for one minute before its ending. A book to rediscover.
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Summary: The beginning of the L.A. saga
Review: Some of Ellroy's works are interconnected and critics or publishers have distributed his LA novels in the so-called LA Quartet (Black Dhalia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz)or the Dudley Smith Trio (the previous except Black Dhalia). Why Clandestine doesn't appear in any of this series is a mystery to me. Indeed Clandestine can be considered the first chapter of any of the series: it is set in LA in the early 50's, the plot follows similar patterns as the rest of the series (LAPD talented young officer gets into trouble and finds redemption by investigationg a murder), it features the omnipresent Dudley Smith...
Perhaps it is not as mesmeraizing as some of the LA Quartet but it is quite more realistic. It is free of some of the coincidential elements (i.e. officer assigned to a case conected with a crime his father investigated 20 years before)that somehow destroy the coherence in the other novels.
To sum up a fantastic introduction to Ellroy's noir universe.
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