Friday 28 August 2009

Are You Ready...?

TICKETS TO THIS EVENT ARE NOW ON SALE AT NO ALIBIS!!!

Call in to the store for yours now!

(Open Monday to Saturday.)


David Torrans has outdone himself yet again. This from his mailing list:

James Ellroy

November

No Alibis Bookstore is very pleased to announce that we will be hosting an event with none other than the Demon Dog of American crime fiction, James Ellroy, in early November to celebrate the release of the final book in his Underworld USA trilogy, BLOOD'S A ROVER.

As with the Michael Connelly event that we hosted earlier in the year, we fully expect this one to grow beyond the confines of the shop, so we would like to gauge interest so that we can find a suitable venue for this once-in-a-lifetime event. If you would like to attend, please click here to send us an email with your details (or send an email to the address at the top of the page with the subject line "James Ellroy 1109", and include your name, phone number and the number of tickets you might be interested in in the body of the email message). We will be in touch closer to the time with a firm date, time, location and ticket price, and people who sign up for this event will be notified before we send the regular email to our wider email group.

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed LA Quartet, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the first two parts of this Underworld USA trilogy, American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand which were both Sunday Times bestsellers.



It's 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are dead. The Mob, Howard Hughes and J Edgar Hoover are in a struggle for America's soul, drawing into their murderous conspiracies the damned and the soon-to-be damned. Wayne Tedrow Jr.: parricide, assassin, dope cooker, mouthpiece for all sides, loyal to none. His journey will take him away from the darkness and into an even greater darkness. Dwight Holly: Hoover's enforcer and hellish conspirator in terrible crimes. As Hoover's power wanes his destiny lurches towards Richard Nixon and self-annihilation. Don Crutchfield: is a kid, a nobody, a wheelman and a private detective who stumbles upon an ungodly conspiracy from which he and the country may never recover. All three men are drawn to women on the opposite side of the political and moral spectrum; all are compromised and ripe for destruction. Only one of them will survive. The final part of James Ellroy's "Underworld USA" trilogy is set during the social and political upheaval of 1968-72. "Blood's a Rover" is an incandescent fusion of fact and fiction and is James Ellroy's greatest masterpiece.


NO ALIBIS BOOKSTORE
83 BOTANIC AVENUE
BELFAST BT7 1JL
david@noalibis.com
ph. 02890-319601
fax. 02890319607

I imagine Stuart Neville will be there, and Adrian McKinty (very favourably compared to James Ellroy here) will be hopping mad that he's on the other side of the world. (gb)

17 comments:

adrian mckinty said...

Quick review: its his second best book, which means its the second best American crime novel of the last fifty years. The first best? Book 2 of the trilogy - The Cold 6000.

What I'm saying is that Ellroy isnt good, he's great. He's up there with Don Dellilo, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon.

Its going to be some night.

Stuart Neville said...

Ellroy will be the biggest thing to hit Belfast since Semtex.

Gerard Brennan said...

Adrian - Blog comment reviews... That could be your new thing. Twitter awaits...

Stuart - NICE! I might have to send a link to this thread to the Belly Telly or something. T'would be a shame to waste a killer blurb like that!

gb

adrian mckinty said...

I saw what you did there Stuart. I agree, great blurb.

Incidentally did you know that Bohumil Sole, the scientist who invented Semtex strapped several pounds of the stuff to his chest and blew himself up with it?

Not a lot of people know that.

Gerard Brennan said...

Adrian - I didn't know that. Nice nugget. Was it a penance-type thing?

gb

adrian mckinty said...

Had to delete my previous comment because of a spelling mistake so now it looks like you're psychic!

Could be, but apparently he was "depressed" so that could be guilt, girl trouble or a biochemical imbalance.

Gerard Brennan said...

Adrian - It would have looked that way if I didn't have an itchy trigger finger over the delete button and a slight touch of OCD... Still, we'll have confused somebody by now!

gb

adrian mckinty said...

well anyway the relevant points are this:

1) ellroy's coming to town
2) stuart's funny
3) this is ellroy's 2nd best book (in my opinion) which means that its bloody brilliant
4) the guy who invented semtex blew himself up with semtex.

that covers it, right?

Gerard Brennan said...

Adrian - I'd say those are the salient facts all right. Thanks.

gb

seana graham said...

Gerard,

You've given Adrian a chance to write a mini-review, share a little known fact he's probably been hoarding up for years, and post a list. He can't ask for much more than that.

Stuart,

I am a little bit scared to even think about Ellroy and Belfast in one sentence. Has anyone really thought this tour through?

Seriously, though, Ellroy must really be hitting the road for this book. By early November he will probably just barely have finished his U.S. tour. Of course, he is one of those authors who really will help sell his own books.

I hope you guys are going to the event.

Gerard Brennan said...

Seana - Oh, yeah. I'll be there. And you're right, he's going a fair distance, isn't he?

gb

adrian mckinty said...

However he wont beat the record, this is a direct quote "Adrian is the person who has travelled furthest to attend a No Alibis event."

Gerard Brennan said...

Adrian - And I don't think it is beatable, is it? I mean, you're on the other side of the planet.

gb

Gerard Brennan said...

Oh, and the quote is attributable to David Torrans, proprietor of No Alibis, crime fiction junkie and Jazz enthusiast.

gb

adrian mckinty said...

Ger

Stuart just a rave in PW. This is massive! They wont let me link for some reason, but you should check it out. Google Stuart Neville Publishers Weekly.

Brilliant stuff.

seana graham said...

It's terrific.

Nice mention of you there too, Mr. McKinty, though I know you don't like to call attention to that.

Gerard Brennan said...

Adrian and Seana - Nice. I'll post about it tomorrow.