The Enchanters by James Ellroy – Review

Statement One: James Ellroy is one of the most important figures in the history of American crime fiction, possibly recent American literature.

Statement Two: James Ellroy’s recent novels have left critics and his most ardent admirers divided and sometimes baffled by their complexity and the author’s stylistic experiments.

Both of the above statements are objectively correct. Whether you like them or not is somewhat beside the point. Expectations are high for Ellroy’s latest novel The Enchanters, simply because curiosity is needling away at the reader. Will it be a return to form, or will it contain much of the repetitive alliteration and convoluted plotting that flummoxed readers of Perfidia and This Storm?

The Enchanters begins on August 4, 1962. JFK is in the White House. RFK is waging war on organised crime as Attorney General. These two very different siblings, the womaniser and the idealist, reign over the metaphorical court of Camelot, but the death of a blonde bombshell is about to challenge all of that. The Enchanters begins on the day Marilyn Monroe died. Sleazebag private eye and fixer Fred Otash has his hands full. He’s helping the LAPD’s ‘Hat Squad’ to throw a kidnap suspect from a clifftop on the Chavez Ravine. Otash’s motto is ‘Opportunity is love’ and he senses Monroe’s death is a big opportunity. Does it connect to the kidnapping of a B-movie starlet Otash has been investigating? Or the spiralling production costs of Cleopatra which are bankrupting Twentieth Century Fox? Or is it related to the actor Roddy McDowell‘s self-directed, curated personal porno collection? In Ellroy’s version of Hollywood, behind the glitz and glamour, everything connects in a world of scandal and sleaze.

This is classic Ellroy territory, and the good news is that The Enchanters reads very well. Ellroy knows this world and delights in taking the reader on a tour through its seamier side. Readers may feel relieved that he has abandoned the WWII setting of his previous two novels and returned home. Also, he has scaled back on the endless alliteration of Widespread Panic, which made Otash, through the first-person narration, a rather facetious character. In The Enchanters, Ellroy gives some hidden depths to the man so that, despite Otash’s venality, he comes across as a tragic figure and a sympathetic one. 

With The Enchanters, Ellroy has once again cast his spell.

Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy is published by Bloomsbury.

This review was cross-posted on Shots.