Ellroy, Good and Bad

I have to thank sharp-eyed reader Ian Rogers for drawing the following to my attention: the atmospheric, eye-catching and vivid new James Ellroy cover from the US (it's a Knopf, so possibly a Chip Kidd design?)...

..and the rather ugly UK equivalent, which has no credited designer, and which on first glance appears to be a beanbag eating a man's arm on TV.

That could have been an effective image, if it had full-bleed to the edges of the cover, but something has gone awfully wrong.