A Simple Act of Violence

Starred review from May 2, 2011
At the outset of this superb crime thriller from Ellory (The Anniversary Man), Det. Robert Miller, a veteran Washington, D.C., cop who doesn't have much of a life outside his job, arrives at the house of Catherine Sheridan, an attractive woman who's been badly beaten and strangled. Around her neck is a ribbon attached to a luggage tag, the hallmark of the Ribbon Killer, who's claimed three other female victims in the same upscale neighborhood over the past eight months. Bizarrely, Sheridan's murderer ordered pizza delivered, thus insuring that the corpse would be found right away. Meanwhile, in creepy first-person asides, someone using the alias John Robey reveals he knows a great deal about the crimes. As the case unfolds, the motive behind the murders gradually comes into focus, connecting with much larger political issues. Impressive prose and pacing, coupled with a grim, unflinching view of reality that James Ellroy would recognize, make this a must-read for noir fans. 5-city author tour.

July 1, 2011

A serial killer plies his trade in the nation's capital.

Metro D.C. homicide detectives Miller and Roth are befuddled by the Ribbon Killer investigation, so dubbed for the perp's habit of leaving a ribbon around each victim's neck after he savagely beats and strangles them. None of the victims matches up with the relevant Social Security information, and none of them has a verifiable history that goes back more than a few years. It seems unlikely that they were all in Witness Protection and resettled to D.C. So who were they, and what did they have in common? The only decent tips come from tracking a man who accompanied one of the victims to another victim's home, and who, for reasons of his own, is leading them toward governmental interference in the politics of countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua. Is there a rogue agent at work determined to publicize CIA chicanery, particularly if it involves the drug trade, money movements and political insurrections, by killing off some of the operatives involved? Stymied by one federal roadblock after another, the cops depend on the killer for a trail of clues that eventually reveal that there's more than one criminal reducing the tax base, and that our Congressional representatives are hardly innocents when it comes to international intrigue and malfeasance.

Ellroy (The Anniversary Man, 2010, etc.) proceeds from an unlikely premise: that a CIA man would start whacking his compatriots to indict the feds. But conspiracy buffs will have a field day.

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Starred review from May 1, 2011
Ellory (author of Strand magazines Thriller of the Year winner, A Quiet Belief in Angels, 2009) is back with an amazing new novel. Its not only a mystery with enough plot twists to keep the most jaded fan of the genre guessing; its also a high-speed car chase of a thriller. The bones of the book are structured around the well-reported CIA/Reagan/Bush complicity in skimming money from the cocaine trade to build the infamous drugs-for-guns bridge that supported contra intervention in Nicaragua. Launching from a seeming simple act of violence, Ellory lures the reader into a Machiavellian tapestry of international proportions. The premise is deceptively simple: two Washington, D.C., beat cops are assigned to several murder cases that appear to be the usual and customary work of a psychopathic serial killer. However, the further they get into the case, the stranger the possibilities become. Many writers who attempt to construct a novel with the levels of geopolitical intrigue found here wind up producing a string of lame polemics or, even worse, a conspiracy-theory rant. Its a tribute to Ellorys mastery of his craft to note that he avoids these pitfalls completely. This is a superbly entertaining book and one that will endure in the readers thoughts long after the last page turns. After several fine novels, its high time for Ellory to take his rightful place on crime fictions A-list.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)