Ellroy writes in the clipped, profane, aggressively insensitive style of classic crime noir. This book is not for the easily offended, although it is an equal opportunity offender: among those colorfully disparaged are Italians, Hispanics, Vietnamese, Southern whites, Jews, Catholics, women, and especially gays and blacks, who rack up over a dozen separate derogatory epithets each, including some I had never heard before. My childhood was spent in the "enlightened" post-civil rights '60s and '70s, in relatively affluent and tolerant suburbs of Los Angeles and Cleveland, and this book helped me grasp for the first time in my life the hatred for minorities, especially blacks and gays, felt by large blocks of Americans. For them, including such figures as J. Edgar Hoover and a fair portion of the crime fighting establishment, the civil rights era was a threat, a disruption and an offense, and leaders such as Martin Luther King, often referred to here as "Martin Lucifer Coon," were widely loathed.

This book is pure testosterone: all action is observed from a male perspective and the few female characters of note serve as loyal (or otherwise) support for the main male characters. Everyone is dirty, everyone has mixed motives, all of the main characters occupy a clandestine twilight world where the borders between cop/spy/criminal are more membrane than wall, and the figures permeate those membranes with regularity if not impunity.

The plot is far too Byzantine to explicate here, but in a nutshell, LVPD Sgt. Tedrow is sent by his Mob-controlled superior to Dallas in November of '63 to kill a black pimp who knifed a casino card dealer in Vegas. Liberal, idealistic Tedrow is loathe to perform the task, for which he has been paid $6,000 ("cold") in advance. His Dallas PD liaison - a scabrous, drunken Klansman with ties to Tedrow's right wing pamphleteer father back in Vegas - is all too eager to "clip the spook"; he and Tedrow Jr. clash on every level.

Littell and Bondurant, beholden to the Mob for past indiscretions, are also in Dallas and are involved in the assassination of JFK. All become entangled; the pimp is not killed but others are with profound consequences for Tedrow Jr., and the chase is afoot. Tedrow Jr's character transmogrifies over the course of the book, with its final form not revealed until the shocking climax. We truly don't know Tedrow Jr. until the final page.

The Cold Six Thousand is a must for fans of crime/spy fiction, and for those who appreciate subtle character study. For others it is probably too grim, gruff, and grotesque.