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The Enchanters

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The Enchanters

By: James Ellroy
Narrated by: Craig Wasson
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Los Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker's looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash.

The freewheeling Freddy O. Tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim "Opportunity is Love." Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe's death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle. We are with him as he tears through all those who block his path to the truth. We are with him as he penetrates the faux-sunshine of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and the shuck of Camelot. We are with him as he falters, and grasps for love beyond opportunity. We are with him as he tracks Marilyn Monroe's horrific last charade through a nightmare L.A. that he served to create - and as he confronts his complicity and his own raging madness.

It's the Summer of '62, baby. Freddy O.'s got a hot date with history. The savage Sixties are ready to pop. The Rolling Stones proclaim it best: We're just a shout away.

The Enchanters is a transcendent work of American popular fiction. It is James Ellroy at his most crazed, brilliant, provocative, profanely hilarious, and stop-your-heart tender. It is a luminous psychological drama. It is an unparalleled thrill ride. It is resoundingly the great American crime novel.

©2023 James Ellroy (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Crime Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Literary Fiction Mystery Private Investigators Crime Detective Heartfelt Witty Suspense

Critic Reviews

Epic mashups of historical fact and filthy fantasy . . . no one does it better than Ellroy
This entire book is one gleefully violent foul-mouthed research note. It’s vivid, gripping, surreal
No one captures the nightmare that lies behind the American dream better than the unforgettable Ellroy . . . This is the master of darkness at his incomparable best — simply impossible to put down
Nobody does crime like James Ellroy . . . One of Ellroy's best works in years (Dan Jones)
One of the great American writers of our time
Ask me to name the best living novelist who's fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted, and paranoid . . . and it becomes simple: James Ellroy. If insanity illuminated by highly dangerous strokes of literary lightning is your thing, then Ellroy is your man (Stephen King)
James Ellroy is the American Dostoyevsky (Joyce Carol Oates)
Truly invigorating . . . demonically riveting (Jake Kerridge)
Highly entertaining
Electrifying
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