I love Ellroy's writing style. The story is told from an interesting point of view. There is a lot of darkness so don't read it if you are feeling down. ( )

The author
Roger Jon Ellory was born in Birmingham, England, June 20th 1965. At age 7 his mother died and with his father out of the picture already he was send of to boarding school. He returned to Birmingham age 16 and at 17 he spend some time in jail for poaching.
After a short career as a musician he devoted himself to studying obscure philosophies and reading.
He had a lot of trouble getting his first stories published as UK publishers did not want to publish books set in America and American publisher did not want to publish books set in America written by an Englishman. Eventually Orion picked up the book "Candlemoth" and published it. This book secured a nomination on the shortlist for the Crime Writers’ Association Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2003. For more information on R.J. Ellory visit http://www.rjellory.com

The review
I am doing a A-Z challenge this year on book titles. I had many books qualifying for the Q but either I could not get my hands on a copy or they where just not my thing and I was not able to continue reading them. After a thorough search I found this book and I was attracted to it immediately. I was in need of a nice crime novel, police, murders, excitement. And all those elements where in this story and there was more story and more and more... and eventually a bit to much story.
The book takes of with a very descriptive chapter on New Orleans. You almost miss out that they actually found a dead body and the police is gathering around the crime scene. There are some characters introduced of whom you think will be the lead investigators on the murder case but it keeps being handed over and over and over until some other important FBI people are introduced and they finally stick with it. The former well introduced police men are not coming back until the end of the book when they are mentioned to show the author has not forgotten about them. This made that I was not sure which character I had to invest in and connect to until 150 pages into the book. I like to hang myself up on a character and move along trough the story. I missed that in the beginning making it difficult for me to get hooked. Eventually the two main characters get a bit to intense and you feel like skipping on their thoughts /story cause there are again to many details.
And that is the main problem with the whole storyline. The author looses himself and the story at regular intervals, making clear he did his research on things but slowing down a good story. There is a line about certain trees that are characteristic for New Orleans which is repeated three or four times, there is an extended description of which roads are in a certain area in New Orleans of which most are not even relevant to the story but you can look it up on google maps and see exactly where the “body has been found”.
That is a shame cause without that the story would have been a 4 star book for me. There was a lot of crime and seen from the eyes of a certain criminal making it very interesting. Though at some point the plot can be guessed it takes a while before all things drop in place. For me the book now is not more than three stars and I even doubted for two but it was not that bad. Am not sure I would recommend it to someone though. ( )

When Catherine Ducane disappears in the heart of New Orleans, the local cops react rapidly - she is the daughter of the Governor of Louisiana after all. But the case gets very strange, very quickly. Her bodyguard turns up horribly mutilated in the trunk of a beautiful vintage car and when her kidnapper calls he doesn't want money: he wants time alone with Ray Hartmann, who works for a Washington-based organised crime task force. All Ray wants to do is get this over with quickly, and go home to try and repair his broken marriage. Instead he must listen to the mysterious kidnapper, an elderly Cuban named Ernesto Perez, who wants to tell him his life story. It's only when he realises that Ernesto has been a brutal hitman for the Mob since the 1950s that things start to come together. But by the time the pieces fall into place, it's already too late...

Beau suspens et belle fin ( )

Ernesto Perez, een oude Cubaan, meldt zich als de ontvoerder van Catherine Ducane, dochter van de gouverneur van Louisiana. Vanaf het begin organiseert Ernesto vorm en inhoud van de verhoren. Hij toont zich regisseur, manipulator en schaakgrootmeester van zijn eigen proces. Hij vertelt aan Hartmann, werkzaam bij een team dat onderzoek doet naar de georganiseerde misdaad, het verhaal van zijn gewelddadige jeugd en zijn leven als huurmoordenaar in dienst van de maffia. Dit alles tegen de achtergrond van de Cubacrisis en de op- en ondergang van de Kennedy-dynastie. Perez is een meedogenloos moordenaar, maar ook een zorgzame en toegewijde vader voor zijn zoon Victor. De auteur laat zich kennen als een rasverteller die ons moeiteloos in prachtig bloemrijk proza door meer dan 500 bladzijden leidt. Van de schrijver verscheen eerder 'Een stil geloof in engelen'* dat net als deze nieuwe literaire thriller veel positieve aandacht van de pers ontving.