• White Jazz

  • A Novel
  • By: James Ellroy
  • Narrated by: Scott Brick
  • Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (247 ratings)

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White Jazz  By  cover art

White Jazz

By: James Ellroy
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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Publisher's summary

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns - it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer, a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.

Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat", and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, and from racketeers and drug kingpins, all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "42 and going on dead", it's dues time.

Klein tells his own story, his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing, taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive.

Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.

©2007 James Ellroy (P)2007 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"Riffling, rolling, reeling....Ellroy's best." ( The Denver Post)
"One of the great American writers of our time." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)
" White Jazz makes previous detective fiction read like Dr. Seuss." ( San Francisco Examiner)

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What listeners say about White Jazz

Average customer ratings
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Love me fierce in danger.

"in the end I possess my birthplace and I am possessed by its language."
-- Ross MacDonald."

"Tell me anything
Tell me everything.
Revoke our time apart.
Love me fierce in danger."
-- James Ellroy, White Jazz

4.5 stars. Sure, you could read this as just the final book in Ellory's masterpiece LA Quartet, but Ellory is playing for bigger stakes. He isn't just writing crime. He is writing the human condition. He isn't just giving you straight dope. He is playing you with pairs. He gives you E. Exley v D. Smith. He gives you Noonan vs. Gallaudet. He gives you J.C. Kafesjian v.P. Herrick, Richie V. Tommy, Sad mom vs Crazy mom.

Think of all of these pairs as fugues that swirl around the narrator, dirty Lieutenant David Klein, reflecting, stream of consciousness, talking, screaming, building, dropping. The narration is like jazz playing two themes together into one. The themes finally coalesce and you see that black and white, criminal and the cop, these are all just linked brothers and sister trapped in a long and fatal incestuous battle for survival, for love, for understanding.

Coda:

In the end everybody dies, but you hope before then someone tells you the truth and tells you they love you. If you are lucky, perhaps, those two will be the same.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

What a great book!

I've always loved this book and hearing it read by Scott Brick is a real treat. I don't get all the 1 star reviews. This is a really good book.

I wish Audible would get some more Ellroy books. An unabridged version of "LA Confidential" would be a great start. Followed by "The Big Nowhere".

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

More characters than the ear can hear.

What disappointed you about White Jazz?

I was looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, Ellroy, spills forth an enormous cast of characters during the first chapter. After about a half an hour of this, I had to stop. I listen to most of my audio books while driving long distances. To sort out the dozens of characters in this book takes intense concentration. This does not make it a safe drive and listen experience.
If I were reading the paper version of this book, I'd certainly be highlighting names and roles and scribbling notes in the margins, just to be able to follow along.

Would you ever listen to anything by James Ellroy again?

I'm not sure.

What three words best describe Scott Brick???s performance?

Even a terrific talent like this, can't come up with enough distinct voices to help sort out the multitudinous cast of characters.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Did I read the same book...

I am shocked at the 3 negative reviews. I loved this book as I do all of James Ellroy's work.
Ellroy searches into his character's souls and the results are not pretty. He has a great understanding of what he is writing about.
The writing style is different. sort of 1 word sentences, but it is not hard to follow at all.
White Jazz is sort of a snap shot of urban life at a specific time in our history. The reality is real. The reality is disturbing.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

The worst book of the quartet

And one of the worst books ever written. Ellroy chose style over everything else: plot, characterization, clarity to name a few. It reads like a poor parody of Ellroy, and it's unfortunate that the quartet began with two masterpieces and ended with this dud.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Scott Brick ruined it.

Listened to the other books in the series and really enjoyed them, couldn't get through this last one. Scott Brick's over-dramatizing has annoyed me in the past, but this time I had to throw in the towel after only a few hours.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Raw, Challenging Final Act Needed Better Narrator

I’ve been a fan of James Ellroy for 25 years now but I only started listening to the audiobook versions of his work. It took me about 2 years to get around to all of them but I recently finished listening to his entire body of work, and White Jazz was the only one that featured a narrator that either just isn’t very good ior was at least wrong for this. Personally I’m leaning toward the former but this is the only thing I’ve heard him read so maybe he does a better job elsewhere, but he nearly ruins this. It’s too bad because White Jazz is a really great novel that features some of the best and boldest writing stylistically that Ellroy has ever done, and features a pretty insane plot that’s a worthy conclusion to the famed LA Quartet.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

n/a

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

One of the worst narrations and incoherent plots

This narrator manages to give side characters personality and main characters bland monotone speech patterns that’s it’s some how overdramatic. This is the type of acting you see in movie and shows where they watch a bad audition tape and it’s showing you they’re bad.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Truly brilliant.

This novel is art. As is the reading of it. The greatest Ellroy novel, and it deserves to be categorized as one of the best novels of late 20th Century American fiction. An epic.

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