While the novel mocks opportunistic red-baiting as a scam to oust organized labor to benefit political careers and the fortunes of movie studio executives and mobsters, Ellroy is no easier on the film colony's communists and fellow travelers, many of whom he depicts as decadent hypocrites, who are easily compromised into "naming names" to hide their dirty secrets. As with most of Ellroy's fiction, he liberally employs the brutal slang of the times. Gays are "fruits," "homos", and "nances;" black people are "boogies" and "jigs:" and their neighborhoods are all "Niggertown."