The Cold Six Thousand

By: James Ellroy

Narrated by: Craig Wasson

Length: 24 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, American Tabloid....

James Ellroy's high-velocity, best-selling novels have redefined noir for our age, propelling us within inches of the dark realities of America's recent history. In The Cold Six Thousand, his most ambitious and explosive novel yet, he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speedball through our most tumultuous time.

It begins in Dallas. November 22, 1963. The heart of the American Dream detonated.

Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop, arrives with a loathsome job to do. He's got $6,000 in cash and no idea that he is about to plunge into the cover-up conspiracy already brewing around Kennedy's assassination, no idea that this will mark the beginning of a hellish five-year ride through the private underbelly of public policy.

Ellroy's furiously paced narrative tracks Tedrow's ride: Dallas back to Vegas, with the Mob and Howard Hughes, south with the Klan and J. Edgar Hoover, shipping out to Vietnam and returning home, the bearer of white powder, plotting new deaths as 1968 approaches....

Tedrow stands witness, as the icons of an iconic era mingle with cops, killers, hoods, and provocateurs. His story is ground zero in Ellroy's stunning vision: historical confluence as American nightmare.

The Cold Six Thousand is a masterpiece.

Please note: This 2001 recording represents the technology of the time when it was produced. This is currently the best available source audio from the publisher.

©2001 James Ellroy (P)2001 Random House, Inc. Random House AudioBooks, A Division of Random House, Inc.

Excellent Follow-up to American Tabloid

This book is part two of a trilogy, beginning at around noon on November 22, 1963. This book continues the story of several fascinating police, mafia, FBI, CIA, and assorted oddballs involved in the JFK assassination and wide-scale crime (primarily in Las Vegas and Vietnam). As I wrote in my American Tabloid review, the book is violent, profane, and probably not for everyone, but I think it's another excellent piece of work by Ellroy.

Good story, Horrible character voices.

J. Edgar Hoovers voice was so bad and so annoying. The first book had such better voices. It was very hard getting used to them on this book. The book was great other than that.
If I hear "you're leading me again" I will scream.

Ellroy's writing style is fantastic

I listened to this a few months ago and am still thinking about it. Gritty, harsh, and dark, but riveting...You'll either love or hate his writing style, so listen to the sample.

a rip-snortin' conspiracy bunker-buster

...and one of the best books on Audible. Brilliantly narrated -- and this is a difficult book to get all brilliant with, trust me -- The Cold Six Thousand will rearrange your sense of second-half 20th century American history. James Ellroy writes like an avenging angel on meth. And in this case, that's a good thing. Can't recommend this one highly enough.

snap shots from the pages of history.

you can't unlearn what you learn. you can't unsee what you saw. you'll go there and will want to run away. your illusions will be crushed.

Nice title

Is really a nice title, very happy to listen and feel everyone can enjoy this book.

All over the place

I Struggled to finish this book and I have listened to every James Ellroy audiobook book except Bloods a Rover. I liked American Tabloid but this book just felt like a lot of jazzed up filler, the first half was okay but by the 2nd half I just didn't care anymore. Even James Ellroy's ex wife and current girlfriend is a critic of this book. They really should have got the same guy that read American Tabloid to read this book, it would have added some continuity and made the book a little better, it's WARD LITTLE! I don't care how it's spelled.

Recommend

Initially concerned about the recording quality but the narration is excellent. Another great story by Ellroy. Enjoy his writing style.

Plausible history

You should not listen to this book if you are looking for entertainment and diversion. "The Cold Six Thousand" deals with greed, corruption, perversion, cruelty, and violence. However, if you have any interest in what was really going on in the 1960's -- how the J.F.K. assassination, the M.L.K. assassination, the Bobby Kennedy assassination, heroin, the Vietnam war, the Mafia, Las Vegas, and Cuba all related to one another -- then I highly recommend this book to you. Yes, James Ellroy definitely has his own unique style of writing -- kind of a cross between Hemmingway and Joyce -- with much profanity and slang, but "The Cold Six Thousand" vibrates with gritty reality, and sounds a whole lot more plausible than the Warren Commission report. I think college American history courses should assign this book as required reading.

Perfect narration; great for long drives

I hope that Audible employes the same narrator of the "Cold Six Thousand" to also record Ellroy's "American Tabloid." The narrator's phrasings and inflections are a perfect match for Ellroy's text. Example: the dialog between J Edgar Hoover and Littell. Given all that's happened in American politics and business the last 10 years, it is worth rereading and let fiction and fact swirl about in the old subconscious. This unabridged reading of "Cold Six Thousand" will keep you wide away during those 12 hour drives between Texas and California.