Clandestine

Mysterious Press - HighBridge Audio Classics

By: James Ellroy

Narrated by: William Roberts

Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy.

When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past. And his good and pure love for a crusading woman lawyer has been corrupted and may not survive.

But even without the authority of a badge, Fred Underhill knows that his only hope for redemption lies in following the investigation to its grim conclusion. And the hell to which he has been consigned for his sins is the perfect place to hunt for a killer who hungers but has no soul.

©1982 James Ellroy. Recorded by arrangement with Mysterious Press.com, LLC (P)2013 HighBridge Company

Gritty

Novel that chronicles life in the '40s and '50s with all it's racism, fascism and hatred of drugs and counter culture.

Worth your time

Time we'll spent. If it was a movie I'd watch it.Entertaining and Vivid historical fiction.

WONDERFUL WRITER AND NARRATOR

There are books by writers that I would love to listen to - that follow a series , but the narrator just isn't up to par. This is not one of those books!

Early Proto-Ellroy

"'Wonder' meant the same thing to both of us: the job, the streets, the people, and the mutable ethos of we who had to deal daily with drunks, hopheads, gunsels, wienie-waggers, hookers, reffer smokers, burglars, and the unamed lonely detritus of the human race."
- James Ellroy, Clandestine

An early Ellroy, that planted many of the themes and dark LA seeds that would eventually sprout and mature in his LA Quartet novels (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, & White Jazz). The book isn't as good as his Quartet, but if you've finished the four and are looking for more Ellroy LA Noir, this is a good place to check out. It was originally published in the early 82 and still hold up very well.

Great Detective Writer beginnings - poorly spoken

If you could sum up Clandestine in three words, what would they be?

Chandler-like Read Aloud

Who was your favorite character and why?

Wacky Walker - he was a real war hero who had seen enough death in WWII

How could the performance have been better?

The Narrator sounded like he was reading the book - which of course he was, but often the best Narrator's just become part of the story - W. Roberts sounded too much like he was reading the words off a page. It ultimately made it hard to tell if the story was good or bad.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Nah - altough it was very interesting to read one of Ellroy's older novels - to see how his style has evolved.

Any additional comments?

The narrator ruined it for me.

Gets interesting about 1/4 the way through

At first I wasn't sure about this book but once the main character investigates his first murder things start to pick up and the story is interesting till the end. The narrator was good but took some getting used to, I just wasn't a huge fan of his voice at first.

Decent Ellroy, Decent Performance

Narrator was hit or miss; reminded me of a book being read by Robert Loggia or Telly Savalas, which was off-putting for a California cop narrator in his late 20s and early 30s.

The story is a bit slow to start, but it speeds up around chapter 6 or so. I’ve only read one other James Ellroy novel, and this one seemed a bit more like a hard-boiled pulp crime story than Brown’s Requiem. Overall, I liked it!