I read James Ellroy, My Dark Places, while overlapping with 2666. The misogyny, the femicides… can get overwhelming. I give Ellroy a lot of credit for putting down in writing a person’s dark places. We humans do not like to go there, especially when it comes to sexuality and adolescence. Yet, how are we to learn and share if we never talk or read about it. It would be scary to “teach” this… so glad to be an economist. On the downside, the writing is the standard hardboiled LA prose, that often skirts cliché. And can be repetitive. Piling murder on murder, the way Bolaño does in 2666, is literary when the writer is paying careful attention to language and nuance. Here it is just one more piled on.