
The Enchanters
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Craig Wasson
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By:
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James Ellroy
About this listen
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • James Ellroy—Demon Dog of American Letters—goes straight to the tragic heart of 1962 Hollywood with a wild riff on the Marilyn Monroe death myth in an astonishing, behind-the-headlines crime epic.
Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker’s looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash.
The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle. We are with him as he tears through all those who block his path to the truth. We are with him as he penetrates the faux-sunshine of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and the shuck of Camelot. We are with him as he falters, and grasps for love beyond opportunity. We are with him as he tracks Marilyn Monroe’s horrific last charade through a nightmare L.A. that he served to create — and as he confronts his complicity and his own raging madness.
It’s the Summer of ’62, baby. Freddy O’s got a hot date with history. The savage Sixties are ready to pop. It’s just a shot away.
The Enchanters is a transcendent work of American popular fiction. It is James Ellroy at his most crazed, brilliant, provocative, profanely hilarious, and stop-your-heart tender. It is a luminous psychological drama and an unparalleled thrill ride. It is, resoundingly, the great American crime novel.
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Critic reviews
"In Ellroy's latest audiobook, former cop Freddy Otash finds himself jammed up. He's investigating the death of Marilyn Monroe but has police officials, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and a swarm of others--actors, a psychologist, and people from the seedier side of Los Angeles--getting in his way. Craig Wasson relishes his narration, bringing a high level of emotion when needed. A few fight scenes are especially well done." (AudioFile)
"James Ellroy, the neo-noir eminence of L.A. crime fiction, is back, with his favorite snake, Fred Otash, in tow. . . . And he sure can shoulder a novel. . . . To pick up a James Ellroy novel in the year 2023 is to know the score. . . . [Ellroy’s] fiction, at its most potent, is driven less by plot than by ritual. He has been canonized and censured; he writes now, in his mid-seventies, on a plane beyond the exigencies of either, enjoying a rare kind of freedom.” —The New Yorker
“James Ellroy's The Enchanters is classic Ellroy: a filthy, boozy, fast-paced, violent romp through the history and important figures of early 1960s Los Angeles, all told in Otash's frantic voice. . . . Ellroy keeps things moving at breakneck speed at all times, which is a fantastic feat considering this is a 448-page novel that delves deep into a plethora of scenes and seamlessly mixes fact and fiction. The trick to it is Ellroy's incomparable style; fast, punchy, telegrammatic prose that demands to be read quickly and that flows like an enraged river.” —NPR
“[The Enchanters] blends the real and imagined into the kind of atmospheric psychosexual spectacle fans have come to expect from the grand master of L.A.-noir. . . . Thoroughly crooked yet unexpectedly appealing, Otash … is a fixer with an eidetic memory who operates in the shadowy fringes of the west coast glamour factory. . . . The plot of The Enchanters is sprawling yet intricate, a riveting series of events made all the more vivid by the precision of the details — the heavy wiretap surveillance opens up a prominent peripheral cast of hangers on, psychiatrists, pornographers and other petty criminals that swirl around the edges of the scene. Ellroy’s writing matches its sensational subject. . . . Filtered through Freddy’s drug- and booze-addled but brilliant mind, the novel is vibrant and vivid, with a pungent whiff of decay. . . . Otash is a fascinating guide. . . . Carnivalesque—literary roller coaster meets Tilt-a-Whirl.” —The Washington Post
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- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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1927: Mary Rourke—a Hollywood studio fixer—is called urgently to the palatial home of Norma Carlton, one of the most recognizable stars in American silent film. Norma has been working on the secret film everyone is openly talking about…a terrifying horror picture called The Devil’s Playground that is rumored to have unleashed a curse on everyone involved in the production. Mary finds Norma’s cold, dead body, and she wonders for just a moment if these dark rumors could be true.
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Not his best
- By Todd Gage on 07-09-23
By: Craig Russell
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The Bang-Bang Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Rio Youers
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet the Bang-Bang Sisters: Brea, Jessie, and Flo. Together, they’re a killer rock band with an unbreakable bond. But that’s only half the story. Offstage, they’re highly skilled vigilantes, traveling the country in their beaten-up tour van to exact justice on criminals who have slipped through the system. Part rock stars, part assassins, they’re a force to be reckoned with.
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A lot of very descriptive violence
- By Sherry L. Wallace on 07-21-24
By: Rio Youers
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Perfidia
- A Novel
- By: James Ellroy
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 28 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans—but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins.
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A Masterpiece of Writing and Narration
- By Charles LaBorde on 01-05-15
By: James Ellroy
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Silver Nitrate
- By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Narrated by: Gisela Chipe
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy.
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Good story but the narrator…
- By MAW on 07-21-23
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The Hunter
- By: Jennifer Herrera
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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After reckless behavior costs NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell her job and her marriage, she returns with her four-year-old daughter to her beautiful hometown of Copper Falls, Ohio. Leigh had stayed away for more than a decade—even though her brother and a trio of loving uncles still call it home—because, while the town may seem idyllic, something rotten lies at its core. Three men in town have drowned in what Leigh suspects to be a triple homicide. She hopes that by finding out who killed them, she just might get her life back on course.
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Just Okay
- By Natasha Johnson on 09-23-23
By: Jennifer Herrera
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Clandestine
- Mysterious Press - HighBridge Audio Classics
- By: James Ellroy
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.
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Early Proto-Ellroy
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-18
By: James Ellroy
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Mount Chicago
- A Novel
- By: Adam Levin
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 20 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A one-in-ten-billion natural disaster devastates Chicago. A Jewish comedian, his most devoted fan, and the city’s mayor must struggle to move forward while the world—quite literally—caves beneath their feet. With this polyphonic tale of Chicago-style politics and political correctness, stand-up comedy and Jewish identity, celebrity, drugs, and animal psychology, Levin has constructed a monument to laughter, love, art, and resilience in an age of spectacular loss.
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Absurd Metafiction for Those with Patience
- By Real Writer on 09-09-22
By: Adam Levin
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Black River Orchard
- A Novel
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Brittany Pressley, Sean Patrick Hopkins, and others
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples, and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.
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Points for originality but…
- By kisa on 11-09-23
By: Chuck Wendig
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The Vicious Circle
- A Novel
- By: Katherine St. John
- Narrated by: Christine Lakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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On a river deep in the Mexican jungle stands the colossal villa Xanadu, a wellness center that’s home to an ardent spiritual group devoted to self-help guru Paul Bentzen and his enigmatic wife Kali. But when Paul mysteriously dies, his entire estate—including Xanadu—is left not to Kali, but to his estranged niece Sveta. Shocked and confused, Sveta travels from New York City to Mexico to pay her respects. At first, Xanadu seems like a secluded paradise with its tumbling gardens, beautiful people, and transcendent vibe.
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Kept me on the edge of my seat
- By K. Elle Kinsey on 11-16-22
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The Wealth of Shadows
- A Novel
- By: Graham Moore
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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1939. Ansel Luxford has everything a person could want—a comfortable career, a brilliant spouse, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world. The United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine project within the Treasury Department that is working to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime.
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Excellent Historical Fiction!
- By Diana L. on 05-28-24
By: Graham Moore
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A Sliver of Darkness
- Stories
- By: C. J. Tudor
- Narrated by: C. J. Tudor, Richie Campbell, Dakota Blue Richards, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Time slips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor's novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A Sliver of Darkness, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination. Riveting, macabre, and explosively original, A Sliver of Darkness is C. J. Tudor at her most wicked and uninhibited.
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Solid story collection
- By DP on 07-28-23
By: C. J. Tudor
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The Swell
- By: Allie Reynolds
- Narrated by: Samara MacLaren, Nicolette Chin, Joe Eyre, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Three years ago, passionate surfer Kenna Ward lost her two great loves—after her boyfriend drowned, she hung up her surfboard and swore off the water for good. But she is drawn back to the beach when her best friend, Mikki, announces her sudden engagement to a man Kenna has never met—a member of a tight-knit group of surfers. Kenna travels to a remote Australian beach, entering a dangerous world far from civilization where the waves, weather, and tides are all that matter. Kenna is tempted back into the surf, and drawn into the dazzling group and the beach they call their own.
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Story was kind of all over the place
- By F. Allen on 03-26-24
By: Allie Reynolds
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The Black Dahlia
- By: James Ellroy
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a young Hollywood hopeful, had been brutally murdered. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history.
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Great naration
- By Grasshopper.Craig on 09-10-06
By: James Ellroy
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Because the Night
- By: James Ellroy
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Three citizens are butchered during a liquor store holdup. An unstable veteran cop vanishes without a trace. Nothing connects these events except for a nagging hunch in the back of Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins' brain--a sinister foreboding that will lead him through the sin-and-sleaze playground of nighttime L.A. on the trail of a psycho psychiatrist with a talent for terror and mind-control. His gore-soaked journey through Hell will plunge this determined manhunter into the dark heart of madness--and beyond.
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A rough draft for better Noir that will come
- By Darwin8u on 08-18-18
By: James Ellroy
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What Jonah Knew
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Graham
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Helen Bird will stop at nothing to find Henry, her musician son who has mysteriously disappeared in upstate New York. Though the cops believe Henry’s absence is voluntary, Helen knows better. While she searches for him—joined finally by police—Jonah is born to Lucie and Matt Pressman of Manhattan. Lucie does all she can to be the kind of loving, attentive mother she never had, but can’t stop Jonah’s night terrors or his obsession with the imaginary “other mom and dog” he insists are real.
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Compelling Read
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-22
By: Barbara Graham
Craig Wasson's brand of mannered over-acting, which might derail another author's work, continues to be a perfect fit for Ellroy. I wish they'd re-release all of Ellroy's essential titles (especially White Jazz) with Wasson behind the microphone.
Most enjoyable Ellroy novel in years
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The Book I've Been Waiting For
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Epic and electric
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Great to have Wasson back!
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the old mastard still has it
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Ellroy’s Prose Crackles, Wasson’s deeply emotional performance
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All this wrapped up in the Ellroy-style Enchanted haze of booze, pills, smoke, brass-knuckles, and guns. Enjoyable trip to Pre-JFK America. Four Stars. ****
Essential Ellroy
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Charming, but not Enchanting
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The story begins with "Widespread Panic" protagonist, and Hollywood's sleaziest private eye (i.e. shakedown artist), Freddy Otash getting word that America's biggest star, Marilyn Monroe, has been found dead. What looks to the outside world as an accidental overdose, or possible suicide, is to Freddy anything but. Otash had been investgating Monroe at the behest of Jimmy Hoffa in the hopes of taking some of the luster off the Kennedy's and Camelot. After months of surveillance, wiretaps, and almost banal brutality, Otash has seen how volatile, dangerous, and uncontrollable her life had become in the year leading up to her death. What follows is an investigation that takes Otash straight to the black heart of 1960's Hollywood like a shot of adrenaline. Like the Ellroy of old, the author gives "The Enchanters" a pace that grips you by the throat and squeezes. Political intrigue, Cold War paranoia, Hollywood exploitation, and casual violence abound. In “The Enchanters”, Ellroy plays with the conspiracies surrounding Monroe's death in much the same way he played with the JFK assassination conspiracies in "American Tabloid". He exhaustively studied the actual historical event and uses it as a jumping off point to craft a narrative that is entirely his. And while "American Tabloid" might be his finest work, "The Enchanters" is no less impressive, no less compelling, and no less engrossing.
History geeks and readers new to the Ellroy style might need to prepare themselves for a...let us be polite and say "less than reverential" look at historical figures like Monroe, Jack & Robert Kennedy, and many others, however. At this point, any practiced Ellroy reader is entirely cynical and jaded (myself included) and very well aware that "America was never innocent". If, however, you are new to the works of James Ellroy, do prepare yourself. The casual racism, sexism, homophobia (to say nothing of violence) of the setting are in abundance and so is Ellroy's own nihilistic sensibilities in regards to power and the people who wield it. This is not the reverential "icon of the silver screen" take on Monroe we’re all used to. Ellroy writes her as an exploited, mentally unstable, almost pathetic fantasist who is entirely in over her head and blind to the very real danger she's in. JFK is not written as the inspiring, noble, and progressive president most americans hold in such high esteem. Ellroy establishes him as a philandering, exploitative, hypocritical trust-fund baby. Even Otash himself, a real historical figure that Ellroy himself had met a time or two is not spared from a scalding characterization and the contempt the author feels for the man is palpable. This iconoclastic take on titanic figures of American history is not out of the ordinary for Ellroy however, and the characterizations never take the reader out of the novel.
"The Enchanters" is Ellroy at his very best. The story and mystery sucks the reader in and never lets them catch their breath. It's a story with despicable characters you cant help but follow, a mystery so captivating you won’t want to stop, and a gritty atmosphere so palpable you'll want to take a bleach-bath after you finish reading it. It is noir with a pulse….
And I loved every second of it.
If you enjoyed "The Enchanters" as much as I did and are looking for similar works, then definitely check out some of Ellroy’s earlier efforts like the aforementioned “American Tabloid" or "Widespread Panic". You might also enjoy “The Black Dahlia”, “L.A. Confidential”, or “Perfidia”. If however you’re looking to explore the dark side of old Hollywood some more, you might also appreciate “Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness” by William J Mann, “Helter Skelter” by Vincent Bugliosi, "The Garden On Sunset" by Martin Turnbull, or "The City of Angles" by Jonathan Leaf.
Noir with a pulse
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Great Fun
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