I am quickly coming to the conclusion that I hate James Ellroy. If he is not writing books like this one full of sleaze and unpleasant characters, he is writing books like the The Cold Six Thousand filled with three-world sentences that make me feel like I am hiccuping my way through the damned thing.

I am surely going to try to finish both of these books, no matter to what huge extent they annoy me, but the fact that I have to stop in the middle to read one or six or ten Joanne Harris/Ed McBain/Kathy Reichs other books to give my mind a break from the irritation says a whole lot about where I stand with these two novels.

Sheesh. Not since War and Peace has reading for fun been so damned much work!