The Big Nowhere - Reception

Reception

The Big Nowhere received many positive reviews. Detroit News said, "THE BIG NOWHERE is a stunner....It's a huge, sprawling canvas of postwar Los Angeles as a black hole. It's Hieronymus Bosch between hard covers, taking up where film noir left off as it introduces a trio of warped, cynical cops hopping aboard the Red Scare bandwagon." Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A., praised the book, saying, "THE BIG NOWHERE is a startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. Through the eyes of some unforgettable, two-fisted cops we are taken from the Katydid Club to the Sunset Strip where the legendary crimelord Mickey Cohen buys the drinks...and the D.A. This is a compelling piece." Rave Reviews wrote, "James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia rocked the literary world last year. Now he's back with an even more powerful and compelling novel of greed, dark passion, and murder....James Ellroy has gone from one of the most impressive crime writers of the 1980s to a major literary voice of the twentieth century. THE BIG NOWHERE is a masterpiece-a powerful and disturbing novel no one should miss." While "The Big Nowhere" was praised for being engrossing and atmospheric, it was also criticized for the "unrelenting negative stereotypes" depicted in the gay and minority characters.

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Works by James Ellroy
Stand-alone
  • Brown's Requiem
  • Clandestine
  • Killer on the Road
Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy
  • Blood on the Moon
  • Because the Night
  • Suicide Hill
L.A. Quartet
  • The Black Dahlia
  • The Big Nowhere
  • L.A. Confidential
  • White Jazz
Underworld USA Trilogy
  • American Tabloid
  • The Cold Six Thousand
  • Blood's a Rover
Short story collections
  • Hollywood Nocturnes
  • Crime Wave
  • Destination: Morgue!
Non-fiction
  • My Dark Places
  • The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women
Film adaptations
  • Cop
  • L.A. Confidential
  • Brown's Requiem
  • The Black Dahlia
Original screenplays
  • Dark Blue
  • Street Kings
  • Rampart

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