L.A. Confidential

⚖The case for it

Bring a good memory and some patience, because Ellroy won't hand you a clean map through who controls whom inside the LAPD. Three detectives drive this thing, each chasing something the badge won't permit, and their collisions push the whole case toward a reckoning. His writing stays icy about its own violence and clear-eyed about the corruption, and these cops never come off purer than the town that made them. Sure, the chopped sentences ask for effort. They also clip along at the pace a cornered mind really runs, and any smoother rhythm would just slog.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Ellroy's telegraphic style began as a page-count fix and hardened into mannerism; whole chapters read like a police blotter having a seizure. The plot needs a corkboard and string, the women are corpses or call girls styled as movie stars, and the period slurs arrive by the bucket. Authentic to its cops, certainly. Spending 500 pages in their skulls is the cost.

— the honest librarian