(Book Cover) PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
While promoting his new stand-up special, comedian Anthony Jeselnik explained that the only reason he’s able to get away with his particular brand of dark, defiantly non-PC humor in our politically-charged era is because he’s been doing it for so long that he’s been grandfathered in. That feels like a reasonable enough explanation for how celebrated crime novelist James Ellroy—who loves placing nasty, jazzy epithets in the mouths of his down-and-dirty characters—will escape scrutiny for his latest opus, This Storm. Ellroy has been writing like this for so long, and his prose is so great, that he’s been given a lifetime pass.