Ellroy tells us all kinds of things about the Mafia, the Klan, the FBI, politicians, Las Vegas. He names the names and that lends an air of ersatz veracity to the proceedings. In the end it goes nowhere. The book is just a catalogue of psychopathic behavior - graceless, charmless, witless. There is no moment in all of it when time sticks and the mind considers a sentence, sentences, a paragraph.
Nothing induces reflection.
The only constant reflex is a vague feeling about the pointlessness of it all. Still, the book will find its audience. Peter Temple's Shooting Star won last year's Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel. His most recent novel is Dead Point. The Age Company Ltd 2001.