THE ENCHANTERS

A descent into the conspiracy hellhole of Hollywood in the early 1960s.

Within the dirty fun of Ellroy's fiction, all sorts of lines continue to blur. There is little distinction between characters taken from so-called real life and inventions from the novelist’s fevered imagination. Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, and J. Edgar Hoover were all real people, of course, before they became Ellroy characters. So was protagonist Freddy Otash, the rogue cop who subsequently dug up dirt on celebrities for the scandal-sheet Confidential, though he has become better known as a figure in Ellroy’s fiction. As for the lines between good and bad and innocent and guilty, they simply don’t exist here. The cops are as crooked as the crooks, maybe more so, and guilt is a matter of degree. Freddy has been hired by Jimmy Hoffa to expose scandal among the Kennedys in retaliation for Robert Kennedy’s targeting of the Teamsters. Attorney General RFK hires Otash away to besmirch the reputation of Marilyn Monroe and distance her from the Kennedys. Monroe’s death proves pivotal—but was it an accident, suicide, or murder? And then there’s the Sex Creep, whose rampages among a half-dozen or so lonely divorcées bearing some resemblance to Monroe have gone tabloid viral, largely due to Freddy (who is also sleeping with a Kennedy, sister Pat, married to the despicable Peter Lawford). A tireless investigator who operates without scruples, Freddy discovers how deeply implicated he might be within a web of crime and murder. The plot embeds Monroe in porn, prostitution, pedophilia, and political protest as well as a scheme to blackmail the president into divorcing Jackie and making Marilyn first lady. There are so many layers of sleaze that it can be tough to keep things straight as the breakneck momentum accelerates.

The climax might well leave the reader as breathless as Ellroy’s prose, and in need of a good shower.