100 Greatest Literary Detectives by Eric Sandberg

Author:Eric Sandberg [Sandberg, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Lieutenant David Klein

James Ellroy

(1948–)

James Ellroy’s description of himself as “the greatest crime writer who ever lived” may be hyperbolic, but there is no doubt he is one of the major figures in contemporary crime fiction.2 His novels offer a bleak yet powerful vision of American history and human nature, and do so in a sharply stylized prose that shames the sometimes pedestrian writing of mainstream crime fiction. Yet his investigative figures sit uneasily alongside the luminaries of the genre. While many fictional detectives exhibit character flaws and weaknesses—think of Sherlock Holmes’s cocaine habit, or the social isolation and alcoholism of many hard-boiled detectives—Ellroy’s investigators shatter the central distinction between detective and criminal.

Lieutenant David Klein is a perfect example of this sort of transgressive Ellroyian figure. He appears in White Jazz (1992), the final novel in the LA Quartet, a series that charts the links between crime, politics, the entertainment industry, and the justice system in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles. Klein’s career has been shaped by the systematic corruption and endemic moral failure of his world. He joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1938, fought against the Japanese during World War II, and returned to the force in 1945, joining an “ex-Marine goon squad” dedicated to strike-breaking and off-the-book law enforcement. Meanwhile, Klein put himself through law school by doing strong-arm work for the Mob, becoming known as “the Enforcer.”3 A brief flirtation with a Hollywood acting career led to more lucrative blackmail work targeting homosexual celebrities.

This background obviously compromises Klein as a representative of justice, but worse is to come. Having killed two hoods for mistreating his sister, Klein has exposed himself to Mob blackmail and become their hit man, the role in which readers first encounter him in White Jazz. Assigned to protect boxer Sanderline Johnson, he instead throws him out of a hotel window to stop him from testifying for a federal investigation into mob infiltration of the sport. This role inversion is essential to Klein’s character: he does not just work on both sides of the law but is the antithesis of everything we believe—or at least hope—the police are.

Klein’s transgressions are not limited to his professional life; he is also personally compromised. For example, his dual police/criminal career has obviously had financial rewards; this is one policeman—and as Ellroy represents the LAPD, he is not alone—who does not have to rely on his salary and pension. Instead, Klein has ploughed the profits of his illicit career into the slum properties he manages with his sister. When tenants are late with the rent, he sends gun-for-hire Jack Woods around to beat up the deadbeats. His relationship with his sister is similarly disturbing, as Klein has long harbored incestuous desires for this “woman [he] had no business loving.”4 Incest is one of our strongest and most persistent social taboos, and it is no accident that Klein’s desires lead him toward breaking this rule too.

If this were all there were to Klein, he would be an

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