Books by James Ellroy and Complete Book Reviews

James Ellroy, Author Vintage Books USA $15.95 (448p) ISBN 978-0-679-76205-8
The novelist's gritty memoir features a new epilogue. (Aug.)
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James Ellroy. Knopf, $28.95 (720p) ISBN 978-0-307-95699-6
Ellroy launches his second L.A. Quartet with a sprawling, uncompromising epic of crime and depravity, with admirable characters few and far between. The action spans about three weeks during December 1941, opening the day before the Japanese attack...
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James Ellroy, Author Knopf Publishing Group $25 (5p) ISBN 978-0-679-40391-3
Although it follows his L.A. Trilogy chronologically, Ellroy's visceral, tightly plotted new novel unfolds on a much wider stage, delivering a compelling and detailed view of the American underworld from the late 1950s to the assassination of JFK....
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James Ellroy, Author Knopf Publishing Group $22 (0p) ISBN 978-0-679-41449-0
Blacker than noir, this latest novel from the author of L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia is set in 1958 and features a dirty LAPD detective with a breathtaking mastery of corruption. Dave Klein, a gangland heavy, USC law grad and police...
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James Ellroy, Author Mysterious Press $15.95 (280p) ISBN 978-0-89296-235-8
At one point in Ellroy's new mystery, a character wonders if the world is ""nothing but wimps, pimps, psychos and sex fiends,'' and by the end of this book the reader wonders, too. Estranged from his wife and daughters and on the verge of forced...
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James Ellroy, Author Knopf Publishing Group $25 (351p) ISBN 978-0-679-44185-4
Crime novelist Ellroy (American Tabloid) was 10 in 1958 when his mother, a divorced nurse and closet alcoholic, was found strangled to death in a deserted schoolyard in California's San Gabriel Valley. The case was still unsolved in 1994, when...
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James Ellroy, Author Scribner Book Company $20 (272p) ISBN 978-1-883402-54-9
Ellroy's clipped and compelling noir realism, so effectively plied in such novels as L.A . Confidential and The Black Dahlia , shows itself to comparable advantage in short form here. The pick of the collection is ``Dick Contino's Blues,'' the...
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James Ellroy, Author Fawcett Books $5.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-449-14841-9
Politics and pre-Miranda rights police work in this final volume of Ellroy's tense, lowdown L.A. epic. (Oct.)
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James Ellroy, Author Mysterious Press $5.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-446-40010-7
An intricate procedural set in 1950s L.A. has crooked cops participating in a shoot-out with gangsters and in a precinct-house riot. According to PW , although ``even the most noble of the characters here are relentlessly sleazy. . . their grueling,
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James Ellroy, Author Mysterious Press $32 (508p) ISBN 978-0-89296-293-8
Ellroy's ninth novel, set in 1950s Los Angeles, kicks off with a shoot-out between a rogue ex-cop and a band of gangsters fronted by a crooked police lieutenant. Close on the heels of this scene comes a jarring Christmas Day precinct house riot, in...
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James Ellroy, Author Mysterious Press $30 (420p) ISBN 978-0-89296-283-9
Returning to Los Angeles a few years after World War II (the setting of his last novel, The Black Dahlia ), Ellroy has come up with an ambitious, enthralling melodrama painted on a broad, dark canvas. The novel's first half interweaves two stories...
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James Ellroy, Author Mysterious Press $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-89296-206-8
Based on a notorious, unsolved Los Angeles murder case, the central drama of this hard-boiled mysteryset in the late 1940sbegins when the body of Elizabeth Short, an engagingly beautiful and promiscuous woman in her 20s, is discovered in a vacant...
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James Ellroy, Author . Knopf $27.95 (656p) ISBN 978-0-679-40393-7
Ellroy concludes the scorching trilogy begun with 1995's American Tabloid with a crushing bravura performance. As ever, his sentences are gems of concision, and his characters—many of whom readers will remember from The Cold Six...
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James Ellroy, Author . Vintage $13.95 (389p) ISBN 978-1-4000-3287-7
The Demon Dog is back with a second volume of previously uncollected works (following 1999's Crime Wave ), most published during his stint as a writer-at-large for GQ . The essays "Where I Get My Weird Shit" and "My Life as a Creep
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James Ellroy, Author . Knopf $25.95 (688p) ISBN 978-0-679-40392-0
Dig it: Ellroy writes tight. Ellroy writes large. Ellroy vibes great lit—he's the Willie S. of noir. It's easy to elbow Ellroy, but that's only because he's got his act down. His new novel is a career performance. Running from...
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James Ellroy, read by the author, Random House Audio, unabridged, six CDs, 7.5 hrs., $35 ISBN 978-0-3078-7585-3
Ellroy’s narration of his memoir of how his mother’s brutal rape and murder molded him sexually and psychically is as utterly distinctive as anything as he has done. Full of vim and vigor, this reading is a bit like mad beat poetry, as staccato...
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James Ellroy, Author, Stephen Hoye, Read by , read by Stephen Hoye. Random House Audio $29.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7393-2388-5
Narrator Hoye firmly nails young world-weary cop Bucky Bleichert in this audio version of Ellroy's 1987 crime novel. The flawed boxer-turned-lawman becomes obsessed with L.A.'s notorious unsolved 1947 torture-murder case, as well as the...
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James Ellroy, Author, Art Cooper, Introduction by Vintage Books USA $13.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-375-70471-0
Ellroy's obsessions--Tinseltown tabloid sleaze and his mother's murder--have fueled his writing and provided readers with countless indelible images, reams of trademark stuttergun prose and at least two killer books, L.A. Confidential and My Dark...
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James Ellroy, read by Craig Wasson. Random House Audio, , unabridged, 22 CDs, 28 hrs., $55 ISBN 978-0-553-39926-4
Ellroy’s latest guide to the dark passages of Southern California history is a prequel to his Los Angeles Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz), featuring many of the same characters. It opens with the murder
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James Ellroy, Author, Craig Wasson, Read by , read by Craig Wasson. Random $49.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-375-41915-7
Clipped, stylized, hard-nosed and repetitive, this novel cuts like a dark, 24-hour Beat poem and sounds like Jack Webb on crack. Ellroy's latest noir tale is full of his trademark violence, sex and rough language. Readers follow five years in...
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James Ellroy. Knopf, $29.95 (608p) ISBN 978-0-307-95700-9
MWA Grand Master Ellroy’s stunning sequel to 2014’s Perfidia opens in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve 1941. Anti-Japanese hysteria has reached a fever pitch and shifting alliances of left-wing and right-wing groups struggle to work out the best way to
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James Ellroy. Knopf, $26.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-593-31934-5
This devious and delicious side trip into the life and exploits of real-life Hollywood fixer Fred Otash from MWA Grand Master Ellroy (The Storm) has a cool conceit: Otash dies of a massive coronary in 1992, but has spent the last three decades stuck
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James Ellroy. Knopf, $30 (448p) ISBN 978-0-593-32044-0
Real-life LAPD officer turned private detective Fred Otash narrates Ellroy’s sprawling follow-up to 2022’s Widespread Panic. It’s another opportunity for the author to showcase his encyclopedic knowledge of mid-century Hollywood: the plot kicks off...
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ARTICLES
  • Days that Will Live in Infamy: PW Talks with James Ellroy
  • James Ellroy Gets to the Scene of the Crime
  • James Ellroy Gets to the Scene of the Crime
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