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James Ellroy

Biography

James Ellroy

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy --- AMERICAN TABLOID, THE COLD SIX THOUSAND and BLOOD'S A ROVER --- and the L.A. Quartet novels: THE BLACK DAHLIA, THE BIG NOWHERE, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and WHITE JAZZ. He lives in Colorado.

James Ellroy

Books by James Ellroy

by James Ellroy - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker is looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle.

by James Ellroy - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in '50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp --- and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet --- and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson --- Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS.

by James Ellroy - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops tag it a routine dead-man job. They're wrong. It's an early-warning signal of Chaos. There's a murderous fire and a gold heist. There's Fifth Column treason on American soil. There are homegrown Nazis, Commies and race racketeers. It's populism ascendant. There are two dead cops in a dive off the jazz-club strip. And three men and one woman have a hot date with history. Elmer Jackson is a corrupt Vice cop. He's a flesh peddler and a bagman for the L.A. Chief of Police. Hideo Ashida is a crime-lab whiz, lashed by anti-Japanese rage. Dudley Smith is a PD hardnose working Army Intelligence. He's gone rogue and gone all-the-way fascist. Joan Conville was born rogue. She's a defrocked Navy lieutenant and a war profiteer to her core. L.A. '42. Homefront madness. Wartime inferno.

by James Ellroy - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery

America stands at the brink of World War II. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans --- but now, war fever and race hate grip the city, and the Japanese internment begins. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that illuminates these four driven souls --- comrades, rivals, lovers, history’s pawns.