Featured Reading Guide
James Ellroy
Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L. A. P. D. detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.
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James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed LA Quartet , The Black Dahlia , The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz , as well as the first two parts of his Underworld USA trilogy, American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand which were both Sunday Times bestsellers.
topAbout the Book
Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L. A. P. D. detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.
topJames Ellroy interview/review
James Ellroy: In His Own Words (1997, from“randomhouse”:http:// www.randomhouse.co.uk)
- What is the root of your obsession with violence and murder?
The die was cast on Sunday, June 22, 1958 when I was ten years old and a rather large cop squatted down to my ten-year-old level and said, “Son, your mother has been killed.” Then, the feeling was relief. Then, my bereavement was taken over by a greater sense of freedom from this woman that I hated. The event instilled in me an obsession with all things criminal and violent.
This obsession and my loathing for her blunted the real horror and despair and depression I might have felt in the manner a kid is supposed to. I have been able to put that obsession to good use as a novelist, but, of course, that was years later.
- Is there an Ellroy character in your crime novels? That is to say, a damaged soul whose issues with women and violence are profound and destructive?
There is a damaged soul in L.A. Confidential who is familiar to me. Bud White’s issues are profound but ultimately constructive. Bud is a brutal male who watched his father torture his mother and sat there while her body, beaten and chained to a radiator, rotted. I love that guy. I love the way he is driven by tender feelings for women, that he is driven to put the screws in place, and nail the perpetrators to the wall. Bud White is the most noble character in all of my books.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- How do you feel the real life events of Hollywood in the 1950s might compare to Ellroy’s portrayal as exemplified by the gossip magazine, Hush Hush and the fake articles from the L.A. Times?
- Ellroy has a distinctive writing style. To what extent does this relate to the subject matter of the book?
- How does Exley’s father’s career affect his son’s career ambitions and his actions within the book?
- ‘You were a pom-pom girl from Bisbee and a whore. He taught you how to dress and talk and think…’(p. 343). Discuss Ellroy’s portrayal of women within the book.
- Bud White vs. Jack Vincennes, brawn and violence vs. brains – how do these two very different attributes affect how the shocking crimes within the novel are solved?
- How far do the crimes of the novel spill over into and affect the characters’ personal lives?
Other Books by James Ellroy
American Tabloid
1958 -America is about to emerge into a bright new age – an age that will last…
Blood On The Moon
Somewhere out there is a murderer with over twenty killings to his name – each…
Blood’s A Rover
It s 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are dead. The Mob, Howard H…
Brown’s Requiem
Los Angeles – Fritz Brown, ex-alcoholic private eye with a stained past, makes…
Clandestine
Set in 1950s L A CLANDESTINE follows Frederick Underhill of the Los Angeles …
Crime Wave
James Ellroy is a unique and powerful writer with a tough and explosive voice…
Destination: Morgue
Destination Morgue is James Ellroy’s first book since the bestselling The Cold…
Suggested Further Reading
- Black Cherry Blues ~ James Lee Burke
- Protect and Defend ~ Richard North Patterson
- Sick Puppy ~ Carl Hiaasen
- Show of Evil ~ William Deihl
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil ~ John Berendt
- California Fire and Life ~ Don Winslow