James Ellroy

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination—in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C.... Where the CIA, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy... Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man's loyalty... Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history.... James Ellroy's trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he's written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open. Chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of the year. "Hard-bitten ... ingenious ... Ellroy segues into political intrigue without missing a beat." —The New York Times "Vastly entertaining." —Los Angeles Times "One hellishly exciting ride." —Detroit Free Press "A supremely controlled work of art." —The New York Times Book Review

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 LAPD detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers. The novel takes these cops on a sprawling epic of brutal violence and the murderous seedy side of Hollywood. One of the best crime novels ever written, it is the heart of Ellroy's four-novel masterpiece, the LA Quartet, and an example of crime writing at its most powerful.

This work is set in 1950s, Los Angeles. The City of Angels has become the city of the Angel of Death. Communist witch-hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a malestrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness.

On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia—and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia—driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches—into a region of total madness.