The Big Nowhere

L. A. Quartet

De: James Ellroy

Narrado por: Craig Wasson

The second novel in The L.A. Quartet. Murder, mayhem, and dirty cops on the make against the backdrop of anti-communist hysteria in L.A. in 1950.

It’s Los Angeles in the new year of 1950. The Communist Scare is heating up. Gangsters vie for control of the town. The Hollywood studios are feuding with the unions.

Then a dead body with its eyes gouged out turns up.

The investigating officer, Sheriff’s deputy Danny Upshaw, is obsessed with the murder case that no one else cares about. LAPD Lieutenant Mal Considine jumps onto the Red Scare bandwagon to advance his career and gain custody of his adopted son. And Buzz Meeks is in it all for the money.

The three cops get caught in the city’s web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. All three have purchased tickets to a nightmare.

©2025 James Ellroy (P)2025 Random House Audio

Inane Censorship

I'm a near lifelong Ellroy reader. I popped my literary cherry with American Tabloid in high school and never looked back. His books are gritty, absurd, and violent explorations of an America rife with racism in our recent past. They humanize everyone involved but sanitize nothing.

The narration for Big Nowhere is absolutely fine. Craig Wasson could do Ellroy in his sleep (though his Mickey Cohen felt a little flat). For the most part the text stayed intact. Everyone from Jews to poor Oklahoma whites to Mexicans were given their period accurate bad names. Only the almighty boogeyman of the N word got censored. and in the dumbest way possible with Nnnnnnnnnn.

in one sentence we have a man call Mickey Cohen a bad word for Jews that rhymes with kite, and a black drug dealer a lucky Nnnnnnnnnn.

Absurd. I'm not buying any more Ellroy books on Audible. Censorship distorts the past and sets a bad precedent

Censorship getting a late start?

Had a hunch when listening, and the second time it happened, I checked against the printed text- in this recording, the narrator just says the letter "N" aloud when the well-known slur beginning with that letter is actually used in the text of the novel. James Ellroy's other novels, also published by Random House Audio, and also narrated by Mr. Wasson, do not censor this slur, or any other slurs, in this fashion. I consider this late change unusual, and believe it takes away from this novel's intentionally harsh, warts-and-all depiction of the period in which it is set, not to mention interrupting the listener's suspension of disbelief.

That said, the book itself is a great, gory, complex mystery story typical of Ellroy, though. I recommend buying a physical copy, or if you must have the audiobook, just dropping a hard R yourself as a stopgap measure. (That's a joke, don't do that.)