Rating: 
Summary: artificial prose
Review: I really liked his earlier books, but Ellroy has let the reviews go to his head. He no longer writes, he just jots down phrases. It is not a leaner prose this way, just jerky and slow.Hemingway and Hammett wrote lean prose -- in complete sentences
Rating: 
Summary: Ellroy's prose is like a rabbit punch to the kidney!
Review: White Jazz is so frenetic it is like reading a speed freak's Beat poem. But it works- Dave Klein (the central character) is so caught up in the chaos around him that the prose must drive hard and fast- dig fast. The plot is a bit ponderous and lacks the grisly facination of some of Ellroy's earlier stuff, but all in all it is a bad cop's fever dream gone haywire! A good read.
Rating: 
Summary: a horrific book
Review: Ellroy is at his most depraved in this story of corruption and murder in the LAPD during the late Fifties. He piles one atrocity upon another until the whole thing sinks into a grisly, self-conscious parody. The plot is way too complicated. Ellroy acts as if he felt that in order to make this book stand out he had to litter the landscape with more perversions per square mile than any city could possibly hold. Then he layers in one of those sad, squalid, improbable love affairs that tough/bad/sick cops are supposed to thrive on and drags us along for what seems like an eternity before he reveals everything. I still don't know exactly what happened, and I don't care. Ordinarily, I like Ellroy. He has an excellent, clipped style that sounds like rocks being chipped from a boulder. But in this case, the sculpture that emerges is ghastly and unbelievable. Try something else, unless -- you're a masochist. EKW
Rating: 
Summary: Pulp On Speed
Review: Dave Klein's as bad as it gets. B&E's, beatings, murders, erotic fixations on siblings, even slum-lording. He's a cop. And he's the main man in James Ellroy's WHITE JAZZ, an new-fashioned pulp tale juiced on speed. Ellroy's become famous for crackerjack plots, in-your-face bad cops, political backroom boys willing to deal, and a threadbare style north of Hemingway. All these elements are present in WHITE JAZZ. It's a fast read--sort of like flying through LA at 80 miles per hour (you catch a glimpse of things sailing by, but you never see enough of any one thing to truly take it in). If anything, this is the major problem with the book: you get hyped images but you never slow down long enough to see the view (Klein himself is a bag of unpleasant characteristics, never quite jelling into a character). This is due to the slash-and-burn style Ellroy deploys here. A master of whip-sharp declarative sentences, in JAZZ Ellroy pares down past the bone into the marrow; the result is often amusingly blunt, but in spots, confusing. The fleshing out of characters is a casualty of the style; sentence fragments do not a human make. The plot, too, is a bit much. Though it's probably based on actual events, Ellroy might take heed of Tom Clancy's view of fiction vs. reality: "Fiction has to make sense." In JAZZ, every law-enforcement agency is so out of control, credibility is broken about halfway through; the best way to enjoy the second part of the book is to imagine it as a satire. This is not to say there aren't good things in it. It's never boring, and there are some memorably twisted motivations among the bruises and gore. The final chapter is stinging and almost laugh-out-loud funny. On the whole, though, it's not a work worthy of the author of AMERICAN TABLOID.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating writing style, but ultimately a waste of time.
Review: Ellroy's style -- terse, rapid fire, compelling (at times). Like porno, attracting, fascinating, repulsing -- ultimately boring. Bad cops, bad guys, murderers, dopers, low-lifes. Life at its lowest, meanest. Evil with no insight. Who lives? Who dies? Waste 'em! Who cares?
Rating:
Summary: A bunch of confusing nonsense that makes no sense
Review: Elleroy does a fine job of making me feel like i don't know what's going on. I reafd quite a lot and often have no problem keeping track of who people are and what they do, but Elleroy leaves me in the dark. So much so, that I often wonder if I am on Candid Camera.
Rating: 
Summary: Truely intrincate! Ellroy's on the cutting edge!
Review: Like John Coltrane playing "Giant Steps" or Bird playing "Parker's Mood", Ellroy creates lines equally intrincate and full of geniality. He's obviously one of the masters of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Unique Ellroy Entry
Review: I found White Jazz to be a probable once in a career achievement for Ellroy. He is at his best when writing a first person narrative, as in Black Dahlia or My Dark Places. White Jazz may be stylistically more advanced, but the story is too convoluted. Great ending, though the reader never knows the characters like they knew Bleichert or Meeks. Ed Exley becomes more formulaic. Even with though there is the Captain Smith dilemma, there should be a movie version with him.
Rating:
Summary: Lunch of Champions!!!
Review: The finest novel of the "L.A. Quartet." It's unfortunate that the L.A. Confidential movie quashed this followup which is, by far, the best of the bunch. Dark, raunchy, and hilarious, White Jazz lives up to its previous installments in fiendish plotting and hardcore style... and then some! Consider the true fate of Dud Smith and Ed Exley along with Ellroy's most disturbing crime novel since... well, you decide. Ellroy fans will rejoice. Everybody else should just start with The Black Dahlia.
Rating:
Summary: A Nightmare in print.
Review: White Jazz is the culmination of everything Ellroy wrote previously. It helps having read his previous works to get into the flow of his narrative style. But I agree with the one previous reviewer who stated that it's hard to find anything else to match Ellroy. After reading an Ellroy novel I have to search for months to find anything to compare and rarely succeed until my next Ellroy "hit".
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