The book is a silly, artificial piece of work.
Heightened emotion, the significant pause, the catch in the throat. or we die together.'' The dots are the author's. Whatever happens, they won't capture us alive. People throw out their chests and utter inane platitudes when faced with heroics that are very difficult to believe. In the right hands it could be exciting, but the author has absolutely no skill in creating credible characters or writing anything but pulp prose. In a way all this is ''Mission: Impossible'' stuff. defector - is carefully trained for the mission and penetrates the Soviet Union accompanied by a nun posing as his wife. (The author assumes it was Andropov who engineered the attempted assassination in 1981.) The intelligence apparatus of the Vatican gets wind of it and - without letting the Pope know - decides on stringent countermeasures: get rid of Andropov. He decides to make another attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II. The period is Europe during the Soviet leadership of Yuri Andropov.
The trouble here is not in the plotting but in the writing. * * *Īnother ambitious big bust is IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER by A. After a while the book becomes so turgid and unrealistic that it is a real effort to finish it. They let their emotions get the better of them. For experienced cops they are mentally unstable.
His two central characters are hard to take and even harder to believe. But, as in some of his previous novels, he gets submerged in a quicksand of psychobabble. Ellroy had only stuck to the straight story line, the book would not have been bad. She becomes an obsession with Bleichert, who even develops a sexual fixation on her for reasons that are not fully explained - or, if they are explained, are not very convincing. Embarrassed officials deperately attempt a cover-up. Police politics enter the picture, especially when it is learned that the Black Dahlia was a prostitute. An ambitious high-ranking policeman whips up a news media frenzy, presenting her as an angel on earth, and a task force is formed to track down the killer. She is an attractive-looking young woman who has been found tortured and murdered. They become partners on the street and work up an enviable record. They enjoy, if that is the word, a nonsexual menage a trois with Blanchard's girlfriend. Blanchard knocks Bleichert out in a fight organized to publicize the L.A.P.D. Both were highly regarded professional boxers before entering the Los Angeles Police Department. It is a big, sprawling novel about the relationship of two cops - Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard -in the 1940's. If THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy (Mysterious Press, $16.95) were a play, it would be reviewed as overwritten, overdirected, overproduced and overwrought.
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