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    Brown's Requiem
    Brown's Requiem
    Brown's Requiem
    Audiobook9 hours

    Brown's Requiem

    Written by James Ellroy

    Narrated by R.C. Bray

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the tradition of Chandler and Wambaugh, the author of The Black Dahlia brilliantly evokes the dark underside of Los Angeles. When P.I. Fritz Brown undertakes an investigation into blood money changing hands at a golf course, he plunges into a nightmare of arson, corruption, and porn.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJun 5, 2012
    ISBN9781611748406
    Brown's Requiem

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    Reviews for Brown's Requiem

    3.5/5

    160 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Not quite what I was looking for, likely spoiled by Elmore Leonard. Fritz is needlessly violent, and to questionable ends. LA does nearly emerge as a character itself - hopefully he get's better after this initial effort.
    • 3/5
      Between 20o3 and 2008, I went through a phase where I thought James Ellroy was the best living novelist. I loved his schtick so much that my own writing--fiction or non--read like a pastiche of Ellroy's telegraphic style. While I still appreciate him (most of his novels survived the various pre-/post-moving book culls I made), I feel like I've calmed down and grown up, I guess? At the very least, his flaws--which were always there--have become really apparent, so much so that I just don't have the energy or heart to dive back into his novels again.

      But I've had Brown's Requiem, his 1980 debut, on my "unread" shelf for nearly a decade, and I just grabbed it on a whim and dived in (via audiobook). From page one, Brown's Requiem reads like a trial run for every other book Ellroy has written. It's all here: an obsessed protagonist; a hilariously over-complicated plot; lots of focus on classical music as "good music"; gonzo violence (including the good ol' "empty gun into someone's face" deal that Ellroy uses all of the time); and so on. Fritz Brown is, however, not as insanely racist as almost every other Ellroy protagonist, and he even defends minorities in a few spots...though these moments feel really forced.

      The writing is cleaner and more traditional than Ellroy's later books, but his staccato pacing is still here. The book made me remember why I liked Ellroy so much, but it also reminded me why I no longer obsess over him. The guy has basically been writing the same book over and over from this point on--he's rehashing the same worldview that's guided him since his mom's murder, and I just have a hard time with it these days.
    • 4/5
      Two weeks before the Utopia Club was consumed by an arsonist's torch, private investigator and car repossessor Fritz Brown was having a drink there when the man next to him spilled his drink in Fritz's lap. The man immediately apologized. Re cognition of that man was to be the key unraveling a mystery almost ten years later.

      Fritz Brown is James Ellroy's first creation and a worthy successor to Philip Marlowe. Brown is an ex-cop, dismissed from the L.A.P.D. for having broken the legs of the Vice Department's favorite snitch. Brown was incensed that the department continued to support the informer, even after learning of the man's pedophilic practices.

      Brown is hired by a sadist to dig up dirt on his sister's "boyfriend." Soon he is mired in murder, arson, swindles, police corruption, and enough perversion to keep an entire squad of detectives busy. Brown has to face his own demons before resolving the crime in his own extra-legal fashion.

      I recommend listening to Mahler's Second Symphony while reading this fast-paced novel. It's not called the Resurrection Symphony for nothing.
    • 4/5
      This book took me longer as I thought. Partly because I somehow lost interest in the middle (because I confused the characters…) partly because I started reading the daily papers more carefully (aprox 3h reading a day). That’s that. But as soon as I had reached the last third of the book I was hooked again. Brown’s irritating case really got a good drive to the end and I really enjoyed following him to strange places in L.A. and Mexico often linked to golf and dodgy caddies.After reading my first noir (and road trip) novel The Cold Kiss by John Rector few weeks ago, I really feared that Ellroy would be somehow equally boring as Rector. But my fear was unfounded because Ellroy’s writing is extremley beautiful and colorful. He got this special ability to draw real pictures in one’s head while reading. And because of this talent of fictional drawing and a complex and surprising plot I will joyfully continue reading the following novels by this highly entertaining noir thriller writer.
    • 4/5
      Even though "Brown's Requiem" is James Ellroy's first novel, it's still unmistakably “Ellroy.” In most respects it is your typical sordid tale of crime and mystery, but Ellroy gives it that extra helping of depravity and malfeasance that makes his works what they are. There’s a hopelessness about the story, a grim reality that all of the characters struggle against but never truly overcome, no matter if the ending is a “happy” one. When he wrote “Requiem” he hadn’t quite refined that “kick you in the nards” voice of his, but you can still see it lurking at the core of his first work.The story is narrated by Fritz Brown, an ex-cop repo man/private detective in love with the greats of classical music and eleven months off the sauce. He is hired by a crazed, anti-Semitic caddy named “Fat Dog” Baker to dig up dirt on an elderly Jewish businessman who has taken up the role of guardian for Baker’s sister. As Brown begins his investigation, he quickly realizes that there is more to the story than he was first led to believe. He finds himself embroiled in a world of crooked cops, down and out caddies, sexual perversion, and old family sins—and in the process manages to fall in love with Fat Dog’s sister. He resolves to redeem himself for his past failings by busting wide open an old murder and ridding the world of a series of bad hombres, all while battling the specter of alcoholism looming over his shoulder.“Brown’s Requiem” was a really good read, but at the same time, you can definitely tell that it was Ellroy’s first novel. The story seems to meander at times, but he pulls the plot together pretty well. My main gripe is that the Brown character’s interaction with other characters seems somewhat… off. That’s the only way I can describe it. He has crazed outbursts at times, other times is uncharacteristically gentle. And the conversations with Jane Baker, his love interest, seem stilted at best. While this type of character interaction could be a great plot device, it wasn’t integrated into the story well enough to be effective, and it really seemed like an area the author hadn’t completely honed his skills. Also, I felt the ending was a little too much on the happy side. It wasn’t a “happily ever after” type of ending, but at the same time I don’t feel like it did justice to the bleak nihilism present throughout the rest of the narrative. Overall, I really did like the book. It was a great detective tale, and though it made use of a lot of tried and true tropes of the genre, still managed to be innovative and entertaining. I wish I could give it a 3.75 star rating, but since I can’t, it’ll have to be a 3.5.
    • 4/5
      My first taste of Ellroy, if I remember correctly. Shades of 'Chinatown' to the story, a hard-boiled detective and all that, but there are some fine incidental characters, such as the best friend drinking himself to death. I was pretty moved by the work, more so than I thought I was going to be.