The Cold Six Thousand
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| The Cold Six Thousand | |
 First American edition hardcover |
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| Author | James Ellroy |
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| Cover artist | Jacket design by Chip Kidd Front-of-jacket photograph by Mell Kilpatrick |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | American Underworld Trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Novel, crime fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Publication date | May 8, 2001 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback), audio cassette, and audio download |
| Pages | 672 pp (first American edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-679-40392-0 (first American edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | American Tabloid |
| Followed by | Blood's a Rover |
The Cold Six Thousand is a 2001 crime fiction novel by James Ellroy. It is the first sequel to American Tabloid—in the planned American Underworld Trilogy—and continues many of the earlier novel's characters and plotlines. Specifically, it follows three rogue American law-enforcement officials and their involvement in the turmoil of the 1960s.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The story begins on November 22, 1963, minutes after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, and continues for roughly five years.
Ward Littell, former FBI agent turned high-powered Mafia lawyer, arrives in Dallas with J. Edgar Hoover's blessing to "manage" the investigation and ensure a consensus: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Pete Bondurant, Littell's best friend and partner, is a Mob soldier and veteran of the CIA's war against Fidel Castro and now the Mafia point-man for their Las Vegas operations. Wayne Tedrow, Jr., an Army veteran and Las Vegas cop, is paid six thousand dollars to fly to Dallas and murder a black pimp, and is instead thrust into the assassination's aftermath. As the tension over race relations and the Vietnam War builds and explodes throughout the decade, all three become involved in a single plot to kill two men: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
The next sequel, Blood's a Rover,[1] is scheduled for a 2008 release.[citation needed]
[edit] Structure
The Cold Six Thousand is a novel with a very stylised and deliberate structure substantially similar to that of American Tabloid. As in American Tabloid, the chapters are divided into named Parts (see Contents, below), and each chapter is numbered and identified by location and date. The action of the book is completely sequential, as the dates indicate. Flashbacks occur, but only in the present tense memory of the protagonists. There is no introduction or epilogue, and the novel contains "summary" chapters.
[edit] Contents
- Part I: Extradition, November 22 - 25, 1963
- Part II: Extortion, December 1963 - October 1964
- Part III: Subversion, October 1964 - July 1965
- Part IV: Coercion, July 1965 - November 1966
- Part V: Incursion, (November 27, 1966 - March 18, 1968)
- Part VI: Interdiction, March 19, 1968 - June 9, 1968
[edit] References
- ^ "General Fiction and Non-Fiction Clients". Sobel Weber Associates, Inc. (Undated). Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
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