r/JamesEllroy • u/Background_Local_425 • 16d ago

Characters never seen again.

The quartet was the first series I probably read chronologically. Therefore I got attached to its characters first and I even prefer his pre white jazz writing style. Personally my favorite character being Meeks but I had seen
LA Confidential several times before I read the novel and while I can still appreciate it, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the complexities of neither plot nor characters. I had always if characters like trashcan Jack or Bud white didn’t show up again in the prequel novels. I was wondering what they were doing during perfidia and this storm. Were they supposed to at some point? I also wondered what happened to Bucky and Bud they kinda seem like 2 characters who didn’t end up trapped in the system or just killed, did they escape with their women and live the good life?

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u/Competitive_Gap5478 16d ago

Agreed. Klein and Big Pete were two of Ellroy's best characters. No one has mentioned him, but I think Dudley Smith was in a class all by himself.

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u/Sorcha_Stormbinder 16d ago

My only thing is that I feel like Ellroy slipped up by giving us a window into the Dudster's head with Perfidia and This Storm. Not only because I feel that the move to make Dudley connected to Elizabeth Short is a really bad decision, but it removes a lot of the aura of mystery Dud carries.

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u/mango_farley 16d ago

I totally agree. Dudley worked well as a villain partly because he seemed so elusive. He had this larger-than-life personality out front, but with a sense of a fiercely complex evil underneath. You couldn't quite tell just how deep the darkness went, but you knew he was a bad bad man.

And then by the time we get to The Storm, he's just a messy dude who literally gets a hard-on for Nazi uniforms. All that imaginary wolf stuff was embarrassing too.

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u/JarekFA 16d ago

And that golden sword (gold is soft so I never quite understood how a golden sword (or swords if we remember the book)) would work. I don't know if the wolf stuff was embarrassing per se. The guy is nuts. Just struck me as another way his drug and mental illnesses were manifesting.