Name: Silent Terror
ISBN: 9780099539704

James Ellroy

The "autobiographical" story of a decades-long string of sex killings that occurred across America.

Silent Terror

M. Marques

I had fun reading it. There are some flaws, sure, but “sweetie”, they’re mostly bearable.
By the end of it I thought it was weird and kind of lost the pace. The idea of having the POV of the killer, then the newspaper clippings AND the diary of the inspector… too much, and it didn’t add any value, it only hurt the story.

Martin Michael Plunkett is a product of his times -- the possessor of a genius intellect, a pitiless soul of brushed steel, and a heart of blackest evil. With criminal tendencies forged in the fires of L.A.'s Charles Manson hysteria, he comes to the bay city of San Francisco -- and submits to savage and terrible impulses that reveal to him his true vocation as a pure and perfect murderer. And so begins his decade of discovery and terror, as he cuts a bloody swath across the full length of a land, ingeniously exploiting and feeding upon a society's obsessions. As he maneuvers deftly through a seamy world of drugs, flesh, and perversions, the media will call him many things -- but Martin Plunkett's real name is Death. His brilliant, twisted mind is a horriying place to explore. His madness reflects a nation's own. The killer is on the road. And there's nowhere in America to hide.

Killer on the Road

Cena

Ellroy’s third novel, missing his later stylistic idiosyncrasies. 

Interesting, but a joyless, lightless journey. It was both very readable and hard to pick back up. No redemptive arcs, no strength through adversity, no nothing but darkness. I’ve read serial killer non-fiction with more life in it.

tldr: Evil is.

3.5 stars.