An Unlikely Suspect in the Case of the Unraveling of the 1960s

If readers were looking for an American author to explain the 1960s (including an answer to the oft-repeated question: Why were we in Vietnam?), it’s doubtful that the numero uno choice would be James Ellroy. Yet this is precisely what the writer has been working on for the last half decade, with results that are, at the very least, fascinating. In his 1995 novel “American Tabloid,” employing a style so clipped one might describe it as Hemingway-without-the-frills, he began gathering the various factoidal tendrils leading to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He weaves them, together with such momentous events as the Martin Luther King assassination and the establishing of the drug trade among GIs in Vietnam, in an acceptable, if dizzying pattern in his new “The Cold Six Thousand” (Knopf, 688 pages, $26.95).

The novel begins on the fateful day of Kennedy’s death and, dwelling on the machinations of J. Edgar Hoover and a cabal of Mafia overlords, plummets through the violence-and-war-torn decade until it arrives at the 1968 slaying of the late president’s brother, Robert.

Our main guide through this feverish, fictional death march is Wayne Tedrow Jr., a hapless Las Vegas cop ordered by the Casino Operator’s Council to fly to Dallas and bring swift justice to a pimp whose misbehavior has merited an unofficial death sentence. Though he has accepted a payment of a “cold six thousand dollars” for the execution, Tedrow can’t deliver the coup de grace.

This failing, occurring shortly after Kennedy has been slain, sends him into a moral tailspin. On his way down, he is joined by two veterans of “Tabloid,” Ward Littell, a stealth liberal living high as the spook pal to Hoover and Howard Hughes, and Pete Bondurant, late of the CIA, a burnout who is hellbent on destroying Castro.

There’s enough paranoia-inducing confabulation here to satisfy the staunchest conspiracy theorist. But even less imaginative readers, caught up in Ellroy’s pummeling, yet strangely mesmerizing, prose account of dark days and even darker deeds, are liable to wonder how this country ever made it past that roiling decade.

(It should be noted that as wild as Ellroy’s conjecture about Las Vegas being the true capital of the U.S. may seem, it jibes with the findings of reporters Sally Denton and Roger Morris in their current nonfiction bestseller, “The Money and the Power,” also from Ellroy’s publisher.)

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For his new crime novel, “The Marquis de Fraud” (Epic Press, 336 pages, $24.95), Philip Reed may have momentarily parked his Car Noir series featuring L.A auto salesman Harold Dodge (“Bird Dog,” “Low Rider”), but he hasn’t quite settled on riding on shank’s mare. Racehorse Noir is his new subgenre, as “Marquis” introduces us to Cliff Dante, a common man San Francisco thoroughbred trainer who is picked clean by a smooth-talking con artist and murderer. As much as Dante hates losing his life savings, and the savings of an elderly gent whom he employs, it’s the theft of his promising colt that sends him and his good pal and fellow victim, insurance salesman Dan Van Berg, on a European quest for vengeance and/or justice.

It’s as though the author has taken a couple of raffish antiheroes, the sort found in novels by Robert Ferrigno or Don Winslow, and plunked them down in the middle of a Dick Francis thriller to fight a villain even more evil and resourceful than is usually found in Francis’ rogue’s gallery. The mix is a winner. Though the descriptions of the wheeling and dealing, including a couple of breathless auctions, tend to boggle the brain, the passion pushing Dante and Dan and the resulting action is as clear and riveting as a photo finish.

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John Lescroart has been pleasing readers for quite a while by providing a continuing account of the life and times of San Francisco lawyer Dismas Hardy and police Lt. Abe Glitsky. The pleasure of their company continues in “The Hearing” (Dutton, 451 pages, $25.95), a particularly grueling outing for Glitsky that begins with the murder of his publicly unacknowledged daughter.

A homeless addict is found on the scene, murder weapon in one hand, jewelry ripped from the victim’s body in the other. When the arrogant, ambitious district attorney decides to push for the death penalty, Hardy wants to make sure that the accused is treated fairly.

Lescroart believes in plot, and there’s a goodly amount of it here, with focus hopscotching from Glitsky to Hardy to the suspect to a smarmy civil litigator to . . . well, to a whole lineup of characters, several returning from previous tales. As complex as the story lines grow, the author keeps us on track, though, to do so, he introduces a set of circumstances that stretch credibility. Still, the heroes are engaging, their foes are threatening and the legal background and the law are well served.

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Dick Lochte’s collection, “Lucky Dog and Other Tales of Murder” (Five Star), and a new edition of his prize-winning novel, “Sleeping Dog” (Poisoned Pen Press), have just been published. He reviews mysteries every other week. Next week: Rochelle O’Gorman on audio books.