Literature / The Big Nowhere

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Los Angeles, 1950.

The city of angels is now the city of the angel of death.

Three detectives with three different angles will be drawn together into a circle of lies and murder. Danny Upshaw is an Los Angeles County Sheriff's detective with a group of bodies that will lead him to find out more about himself than he bargained for. LAPD lieutenant Malcolm "Mal" Considine is locked in a bitter custody battle for his son, whilst being drawn into the corrupt district attorney's plan to smoke out communists in Hollywood. Turner "Buzz" Meeks, a disgraced former cop, is now working for millionaire Howard Hughes and gangster Mickey Cohen. Buzz may try to right a few of his wrongs along the way.

All three men will come together with front row seats to a nightmare...

1988 novel by James Ellroy and the second part of the The L.A. Quartet.

This novel features examples of:

• All for Nothing: Mal's efforts to keep custody of his son end up meaning nothing as he dies taking down the Wolverine Killer.
• Ambiguous Situation: Celeste claims that she made up all of the stories about her Nazi lover, and that he actually was very kind to her and also sabotaged gas chambers. Whether this is true or just trying to dig at her husband is anyone's guess.
• Ambition Is Evil: The District Attorney is starting another hunt into communists hidden in Hollywood. He doesn't care if the rumors are true and he is only using the investigation as a means to further his career.
• Anti-Hero: All of the protagonists are morally compromised in some respect, though Danny Upshaw is the Token Good Teammate until his suicide.
• Anyone Can Die: By the end of the book both Mal and Danny are dead. And then Buzz is killed off at the start of the following book.
• Armored Closet Gay: Danny thinks he's this, flirting with multiple women and cultivating a reputation as a ladies' man. In fact, it's more Everyone Can See It and the realization of this contributes to Danny's suicide.
• Artistic License – History: Similar to Ellroy's previous novel, another notorious and unsolved L.A. murder case — the Sleepy Lagoon murder — is given a fictional resolution.
• Ascended Extra: Buzz Meeks was briefly mentioned in The Black Dahlia before becoming one of the main protagonists of The Big Nowhere.
• The Atoner: Buzz attempts to make up for the fact he got Danny killed.
• Been There, Shaped History:
  • Buzz Meeks rubs elbows with both Howard Hughes and Mickey Cohen, even starting an affair with Cohen's mistress.
  • With regards to the real-life Sleepy Lagoon murder of Jose Diaz, corrupt cop and Ellroy regular Dudley Smith is revealed to be the culprit. Not only that, but Coleman Masskie/Healey, the "Wolverine Killer", witnessed the crime as a teenager, which started him down his dark path.
• Bandaged Face: Danny Upshaw hears a lot about a kid with bandages covering a supposedly burned face who used to hang around Marty Goines and help him commit his burglaries. In reality, the bandages were the aftermath of plastic surgery. The bandaged kid was Coleman Masskie, Reynolds Loftis' illegitimate son. Reynolds commissioned a facelift from Terry Lux to make Coleman resemble him perfectly as part of his own twisted incestuous fantasies. At the time he was seen with the bandages, Coleman was recovering from his second visit to Lux, to undo this job by breaking every bone in his face.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Lucy did some smutty pictures with a Great Dane, and this is the blackmail material being used against her. They may or may not be faked.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Buzz Meeks, Dudley Smith, and other ostensibly far more badass characters give Mal Considine a wider berth than his otherwise unassuming demeanor would seem to require because, during his stint as an Army officer in European theater of World War II, when he witnessed the inside of a concentration camp first-hand, he walked into a room where the camp's commander was being held and unloaded his sidearm into the latter's face. Subverted when we discover that Considine is guilty of Domestic Abuse.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Wolverine Killer is just the tip of the iceberg. In reality, he's lashing out at his sexually abusive father Reynolds Loftis and his would-be stepmother, Claire de Haven, both influential figures who then cover up the killings. On the other side of things there's Dudley Smith, a tremendously corrupt cop who spearheads the anti-communist investigation to cover up the fact that he is the Sleepy Lagoon murderer. Then there's crime boss Mickey Cohen, who's tangentially involved as well.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Outside of the main three, most of the characters are complicit in some abhorrent crime or another. Buzz Meeks is a corrupt ex-cop who does dirty work for Mickey Cohen and helps cover up Howard Hughes' affairs with underage girls. Mal Considine is a wife beater. Danny Upshaw might just be the most upstanding of the bunch, and he ends up killing himself. It says something about the setting when Cohen, the notorious gangster, is given a Pet the Dog characterization.
• Blackmail:
  • A Stupid Crooks example: Tommy Sifakis attempted to do this to Sol Gelfman by sharing pictures of his upcoming starlet having sex with a dog. This is incredibly dumb because he is friends with Mickey Cohen, who is incredibly protective towards women he likes.
  • Felix Gordean, a Hollywood talent agent, also runs a male escort service which he uses to identify and blackmail gay men in positions of power. This includes Reynolds Loftis, who Gordean blackmails with knowledge of his affair with his own son. It's also suggested that Gordean identified Upshaw as a closeted gay man after their one encounter and may have had plans for him.
• Body Horror: The murders are carried out with extreme vengeance and torture.
• Boom, Headshot!: Mal takes a bullet to the face.
• Bothering by the Book: Danny uses the fact that food and beverages are under the control of Los Angeles County to threaten people he can't technically arrest in Los Angeles proper.
• Broken Pedestal: Claire de Haven is a figure on the Hollywood social circuit and is a communist sympathizer who helps people in need. She also enabled a known rapist and murderer to get away with his crimes as well as protected Reynolds Loftis despite the fact he had sex with his own son. This ruins the opinion of Mal Considine, who carried a torch for her.
• Cowboy Cop:
  • Danny and Mal both bend the law when they try to do the right thing.
  • Hilariously, Buzz is a transplant from Oklahoma, and references are made to him working as a ranch hand and a Western movie extra — so he was practically a literal cowboy cop. In practice though he used to be more of a Dirty Cop.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Marty Goines suffered an Eye Scream sexual assault after being killed with an overdose of heroin followed by a Groin Attack. His body was left for exposure in all its humiliation as well.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Much attention is given to the association of communism, labor and racial justice in America as well as how the three are targeted by the powers that be for their associations.
  • Danny Upshaw fully believes he's not going to receive any help from the LAPD due to the presumption that Marty Goines was a dope fiend and then that he was a homosexual. Danny is later hounded into committing suicide under the threat of revealing his own homosexuality.
• Dirty Cop: Both the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department are filled with them.
  • Buzz was sacked from the LAPD for this reason.
• Domestic Abuse: Mal beats his Czech girlfriend within an inch of her life when she reveals she made up all of the perverted stories about her Nazi captor during the war.
• Downer Ending: Danny kills himself before he ever caught the Wolverine Killer he was obsessed with. Buzz and Mal finish the job for him, with both Mal and the killer shot dead in the process. Buzz, the only one left who even cares about the Wolverine killings, skips town and abandons Audrey Anders when Mickey Cohen finds out about their affair.
  • Made even worse by the first chapter of L.A. Confidential, in which Dudley Smith tracks Meeks down and kills him just a week after the end of The Big Nowhere.
• Dramatic Irony: Buzz Meeks suffers this after he manages to barely survive an assassination attempt on Mickey Cohen. He kills the Dirty Cop Eugene Niles in self-defense, only to find out that Danny Upshaw is being made for the killing due to a confrontation the two had earlier. This results in Danny's suicide.
• Driven to Suicide: Danny Upshaw in a bid to avert anyone finding out about his homosexuality.
• Gayngst: Danny Upshaw is actually a severely repressed homosexual.
• Femme Fatale: Claire de Haven is called one of these by the grand jury investigators, but they're colored by their anti-communist vendetta. Claire proves herself to be one for real, however, as she stages an elaborate pornographic movie showing in her home just to expose Danny as being sexually aroused by men.
• The Fixer: Buzz Meeks has taken a job as this for Howard Hughes and his friends, covering up their scandalous liaisons with underage girls, getting their relatives out of criminal litigation and otherwise protecting their reputations.
• Friendly Neighborhood Gangster: Bizarrely, Mickey Cohen is one of the few characters in the book who seems to be genuinely motivated by disgust at the abuse and ill-treatment of the women under his protection. This, along with other Pet the Dog moments, makes him closer to a Noble Demon than most characters, including the protagonists.
• Honey Pot: Danny is sent to seduce Claire as part of his investigation into communist activity.
• Hypocrite: Claire de Haven preaches communist rhetoric and working-class values but is a rich Uptown Girl who doesn't hesitate to use her connections to get herself as well as her friends out of trouble with the authorities, even when their actions involve murder and incest.
• Jurisdiction Friction: The LAPD and L.A. County Sherriff's Department are at loggerheads over Mickey Cohen. Thus, Danny gets stonewalled by the LAPD when he first tries to investigate the Goines murder. A free hand in running the case is his top condition for joining the anti-communist task force.
• Karma Houdini: Claire de Haven ends the book with no repercussions other than a guilty conscience.
• Love Makes You Evil:
  • Mal's love for Celeste leads him to murdering a Nazi prisoner. Later his love for his adopted son results in him becoming a wife beater as he can't stand the thought of her taking him away.
  • Claire de Haven protects her bisexual lover, Reynolds Loftis, despite the fact he sexually abused his son. Also, this results in covering up Coleman's murders of multiple queer men.
  • Coleman himself was severely mentally ill from numerous traumas but only snapped when Claire decided to marry his father despite knowing about his abuse. Coleman had been in love with her and it proved too much.
• Master of Disguise: Coleman Masskie. In his daily life under the pseudonym "Coleman Healy", he wears a fake beard. While prowling, he removes this fake beard and dons a grey wig and makeup to impersonate his father, Reynolds Loftis. During the killings themselves, he wears wolverine-tooth dentures. On top of this, he's been previously subjected to multiple rounds of plastic surgery that completely altered his face, all while living under different identities or anonymously. Danny, Mal and Buzz hear various accounts of a "bandaged kid" who associated with Marty Goines and Reynolds Loftis' seemingly identical younger brother, and Danny even meets "Coleman Healy" face-to-face at the beginning of his investigation. It's not until the end that the investigators finally piece together the numerous identities of the same killer.
• Miscarriage of Justice: The Sleepy Lagoon murder due to being Truth in Television. A man may or may not have accidentally drowned but the LAPD promptly arrested seventeen Mexican youths before finding them guilty of second-degree murder. The charges were later reversed on appeal. The events cast a shadow over the attempted persecution of communists in the book.
• Morality Pet: Mal Considine's adoptive son Stefan. Subverted when an argument over custody of Stefan leads Mal to viciously beat the boy's mother.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Buzz kills a Dirty Cop in self-defense and Danny Upshaw is blamed for it due to the fact they'd been in a confrontation the previous day. This leads to Danny's suicide.
  • Mal has this reaction after he beats his wife to the point their son tries to stop him.
• Only in It for the Money: Buzz Meeks makes it clear to Howard Hughes that appealing to his sense of patriotism in fighting communism is a joke. Not because he's a communist or a sympathizer, but because he's aware his boss only cares about money, women and airplanes too.
• Red Scare: All three characters become part of a task force investigating communism in Hollywood.
• Police Brutality: Danny actively beats up men in a bid to find the killer. Of course, it's pretty standard in this setting.
• Politically Correct History: Averted massively. The LAPD is violently racist, homophobic and corrupt. The persecution of communists in Hollywood is motivated by paranoia, corruption and outright theater.
• Private Detective: Buzz is the head of security for Howard Hughes, which roughly gives him this feel before he's hired by the grand jury and becomes indistinguishable from a cop.
• Scary Teeth: The Wolverine Killer mutilates his victims' corpses using a set of dentures he fashioned out of wolverine teeth. Buzz and Mal get to see this in person during the climactic shootout.
• Serial Killer: The Wolverine Killer targets gay men and proceeds to gnaw on them with dentures.
• Sliding Scale of Law Enforcement: Danny and Mal are trying to do the right thing. Other cops may vary...
• Stupid Crooks: Buzz's stripper girlfriend Audrey embezzles from Mickey Cohen, and is so clumsy at it that he faces an uphill battle covering for her.
• Red Baron: Danny Upshaw eventually starts referring to his Serial Killer suspect as the Wolverine.
• Redemption Quest: Takes up the quest to go after the Wolverine Killer to redeem himself.
• The Reveal: Reynolds Loftis is the father of Coleman Masskie, the Wolverine Killer, and engaged in an incestuous relationship with Coleman which drove him mad.
• Turn in Your Badge: Danny Upshaw is forced to do this when he is accused of killing Gene Niles after the latter accused him of being queer. In fact, Buzz had killed Gene the night before.
• Witch Hunt: The anti-communist task force organized by the LAPD is established as this from the get-go. Not only are the number of actual communists painfully thin but it's pretty much framed as an anti-labor effort from the very beginning operating from political goals and paranoia. Even the people doing the investigation mostly find it to be a waste of time or are outright crooked, with it being stated that a good half of the cops involved "would let off Karl Marx himself if the price was right."
• Would Hit a Girl: Considine certainly doesn't seem to hesitate when he finds out his wife lied to him. The same over a custody dispute.