 His work is filled with pop cultural references to both film and music , as well as politics . Orson Welles ' Touch of Evil and John Ford 's The <unk> are mentioned prominently in more than one of his books , and Roxy Music is referenced in virtually every novel he wrote . The imagery in his novels is largely cinematic , with expressions such as " fade in / fade out " , " quick cut " and " <unk> " ; and sentences such as " a montage traces the next fifteen years " and " If the last reel of <unk> 's life had been a <unk> <unk> movie ... " . With driven narratives , his books have the feel of a movie set down on paper . 
