Product Description

Martin Michael Plunkett is a product of his times -- the possessor of a genius intellect, a pitiless soul of brushed steel, and a heart of blackest evil. With criminal tendencies forged in the fires of L.A.'s Charles Manson hysteria, he comes to the bay city of San Francisco -- and submits to savage and terrible impulses that reveal to him his true vocation as a pure and perfect murderer. And so begins his decade of discovery and terror, as he cuts a bloody swath across the full length of a land, ingeniously exploiting and feeding upon a society's obsessions. As he maneuvers deftly through a seamy world of drugs, flesh, and perversions, the media will call him many things -- but Martin Plunkett's real name is Death. His brilliant, twisted mind is a horriying place to explore. His madness reflects a nation's own. The killer is on the road. And there's nowhere in America to hide.

Customer Reviews (33)

Paperback?
I think it should be clearer if a book is a paperback or hardcovered. In this case I assumed, wrongly, it was hardcovered.

Blistering opening fizzles out by the end
James Ellroy is known for writing characters in various forms of craze and psychosis, and I'm happy to say that Killer on the Road does just that, giving us Martin Plunkett, the ruthless serial killer that we follow through the book.

The book starts out wonderfully, with Ellroy's style firing on all cylinders. Clipped, terse sentences and wild shifts in personality keep your heart pumping, all while convincing you that what you're reading is par for the course for Martin Plunkett, all of it works out in his distorted view of reality. Ellroy does a great job at convincing you that you're reading the musings of a real killer.

The problem is, the book sort of starts to tail off once Plunkett starts killing people. Once he commits his first murder, the tension of the "when will he do it?" has been taken from the book, and Ellroy doesn't really do much to fill the hole that the removal of that tension leaves. Things really start to go downhill about halfway through the book, when another major character is introduced, things just begin to get bland and lifeless. Plunkett continues to mow down person after person, most of them reported in news clippings in long lists instead of having Plunkett describe his motives and motivations for committing the murders. At that point, the book simply becomes a countdown clock to when Plunkett will inevitably be arrested and convicted of his crimes (this isn't a spoiler, the book begins with news headlines touting Plunkett's conviction, as well as admissions from Plunkett himself).

It's obvious that this was a bit of a dud in Ellroy's storied career. He seems more at home writing sprawling epics like LA Confidential, instead of these close, small personal stories focusing on one individual. The book has some glimmers of brilliance and an amazing first act, but it's just a shame it goes downhill from there.

Autobiography of a Serial Killer
I think it was his best book, even better than L.A. Confidential. Ellroy is an expert on the subject. His mother was murdered when he was ten years old. He's a strange dude (read his piece, "My Life As a Creep" in his collection of stories, articles, DESTINATION MORGUE), but an excellent writer. I like the small touches he adds, like when the main character was working at the Hollywood Public Library (where the true life teen Ellroy used to hang out with his glue sniffing friends). Or when he crosses paths with another serial killer. Almost as scary as BTK.

Not good - but possibly worth it for perspective on Ellroy
Probably only worthwhile to offer readers perspective on one of America's greatest living writers, currently at the height of his powers (can he possibly get better?).

Too long, repetitious, with unnecessary slaughter/clutter, silly at times and without surprise. If you're just getting into Ellroy, maybe - but only so you can later discern the massive heights this guy scales in AT and TC6000. But if you're looking around for the rest of the catalogue and found this re-badged re-issue, don't bother, IMO.

Flawed but interesting - yada yada yada
Several reviews have spun the "flawed but interesting" angle, and they're right.My only contribution to the body of reviews is that it's my first Ellroy book, my first serial killer book, and even my first real crime book!And I couldn't have been happier reading it.

I didn't find it particularly scary, and only a little bit chilling.Either I'm a psyco sympathiser or -- more likely -- I just didn't find the thriller aspect of it very convincing.There's a gap between the first person description conveyed in the book and what one surmises would be the endless horror felt by an objective witness.Partially that gap is deliberate; the recordings of a screwed-up mind will obviously (hopefully?) seem a bit alien.But partially, I think the writing could be a bit more convincing, and place you more in the "scene" than in the killer's mind.It's a very fine line, and I don't pretend to suggest exactly what Ellroy could have done better.Using newspaper reports and a detective's diary as narratives is clever, useful, and interesting, but I believe Ellroy relies on this technique just a bit too much.

On the other hand, it is a very interesting plot and characterisation, although reviews have been polarised on both these points.Tracking the thoughts and fantasies, highs and lows of such a deviant gives an invigorating and challenging point of view on "normal" society.

I hope that adequately conveys the impressions of a first-timer.It won't be my last Ellroy or serial killer book, and I was certainly happy for this to be an introduction. ... Read more

Product Description
With this fever-hot collection of reportage and short fiction, the author of "L.A. Confidential" returns to his native habitat and portrays Los Angeles as a smog-shrouded netherworld.Amazon.com Review
You wouldn't expect slick GQ to perform the greatestmagazine service to hard-boiled crime writing since the heyday ofBlack Mask, but the evidence is before your eyes: CrimeWave, James Ellroy's collected GQ works circa 1993-99.

Though Crime Wave contains two stories in the exhilaratinglysleazy voice of the fictitious scandal rag Hush-Hush, and thenovella-length "Hollywood Shakedown," a tale of sex, drugs, and murderstarring '50s crooner-accordionist Dick Contino, the book ispredominantly nonfiction. There's one flavorful piece, "Bad Boys inTinseltown," about the day in 1967 when Ellroy--then a speed freak whobroke into fancy houses to steal stuff and sniff women'sunderwear--read an article by Curtis Hanson raving about Bonnie andClyde and was inspired. Then Ellroy flashes forward to 1996, whenhe visits Hanson as he directs the triumphant film version of L.A. Confidential.

GQ talked Ellroy into writing about the event that made him amaniac, and then an obsessive writer: his dissolute mother's unsolvedmurder in 1958, when he was 10. His investigation of her death beganwith the chilling GQ article "My Mother's Killer," which grewinto the book My DarkPlaces. (If you haven't heard Ellroy read it on audiotape, you haven'tshivered.) His investigation of another woman's murder, "Body Dumps,"is in some ways better, because there's a suspect to eviscerate inprose. "Sex, Glitz, and Greed," written about O.J. during the trial,is an odd fit in this collection, but when Ellroy is on his ownturf--L.A.'s seamy, undead past--nobody can touch him. --TimAppelo ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

What's good here is very very good
4.5 stars

Not every piece here is a gem, but those that are shine brightly. The take on the OJ case is sheer genius, and well worth picking this book up for by itself. Add some nice tight shorts on the LAPD homicide squad, an unnerving story about Ellroy's mother's murder (later expanded into a fine book), and a few variously successful fiction bits, and it's a fine introduction to Ellroy's beautifully taut and slashing prose. American Tabloid remains his peak, but ample evidence of his talent is on display here.

And see if you don't find that OJ essay the very best writing on the subject. Unsparing and accurately harsh, it rings as true today as when it was written. And that's the mark of great writing.

A DISILLUSIONED FAN SPEAKS UP
My copy of AMERICAN TABLOID was so worn I had to replace it. Huge fan since my university years. I have all of his books. Most are superb. Some are good. Some are wanting. This one is the WORST!

For a good writer (and Ellroy is an excellent one!) to put out a bad book is understandable. This one though is PURE FAN EXPLOITATION.

The same stories over and over, themes all too familiar from his earlier books. Absolutely NOTHING New! And the "jazz just ain't there". Stories that fizzle and die long before they are actually over. Gone are the scents, the tastes, the feel of life in the margins. Words only pretending to be cool, characters nobody cares about to love or hate or pity.

If you want to sample James Ellroy start with BLACK DAHLIA and work your way up to the COLD SIX THOUSAND.

I am still waiting for the sequel to the that one.

Too personal an L.A. for it even to be confidential
The strangest crime-novel ever written. It is in fact an autobiographical attempt that tries to connect the past and the future. The past of the time when the author's mother was murered in L.A. and the police did not find any solution to the case, with the present of when he gets back into her file and finds nothing, and the present of another mother who got murdered and whose murderer will never be caught. And the future of tomorrow 2034 and what the author will be as a senile senior citizen, and what the kids of today will be then. The whole journey and perspective is set on a background of dark - very dark - vision : L.A. as a place of permanent crime, of eternal murders that will never be solved, of perpetual war among all the polices of the region, of neverending psychotic schizophrenia for actors, would-be actors, might-be actors, might-ever-be-would-be actors, etc. The author sounds psychotic about it and at the same time his sanity seems to be dependent on that constant unbalanced and unsolved psychotic crisis that he has been carrying since the age of seven, when his parents split. Too personal to be a real crime novel, and yet too imaginative to be a real autobiography. It stands up like a book that is difficult to follow at times. The chapters, sections and parts are ordered in succession but they do not build a line, a road, a way, a vista. They are imploded one into the other and we get exploded out into some fantasy or boredom.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

Too terse
While James Ellroy has many fans, and while agreeing that short articles are undoubtedly his metier, I found that a whole book made up of these sentences was just too much !! His love affair with alliteration is fine for a few phrases, but whole chapters..just too tiring.This was probably the wrong book to read as an introduction to his work, so I'll try another where the style is a little more flowing so that one can concentrate on the story without being irritated by hte jerky sentences.

Crime Wave's a Wicked Wonderful Work
The Demon Dog dishes out his dirtiest, most daring, most dastardly, debauchery to date. Getchell's got giant gonads and guts galore. Contino carries charismatic crime capers to catastrophic climaxes. Ellory's emotional actual-event epitaphs encourage entire exposure. Love these legendary lores that lay down the law and lore you in. ... Read more

Product Description
Before Charlie’s Angels, Miami Vice, or NYPD Blue, there was Dragnet. From 1951 to 1959, Jack Webb starred as Sergeant Joe Friday in the most successful police drama in television history. Webb ("Just the facts, ma’am") was also the creator of Dragnet, and what made the show so revolutionary was its documentary-style format and the fact that each episode was "ripped" from the files of the LAPD.

But 1950s television censors deemed many of the stories in the LAPD’s files too violent or sensational for the airwaves. The Badge is Webb’s collection of stories that could not be presented on TV: untold, behind-the-scenes accounts of the Black Dahlia murder, the Brenda Allen confessions, Stephen Nash’s "thrill murders," and Donald Bashor’s "sleeping lady murders," to name just a few.

Case by case, The Badge takes readers on a spine chilling police tour through the dark, shadowy world of Los Angeles crime. It is a journey that, even four decades after it originally appeared in print, no reader is likely to forget. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The Badge -from Dragnet to LA Confidential
THe Badge is from Jack Webb creator and star of Dragnet and is a collection of cases from the Los Angeles Police Department highlighting their efforts to grow and improve the abilities of a fine crime fighting force. James Elroy read it as a young man and it helped shape his interest in the crime novel.Elroy eventually brought us a number of crime novels such as the famous LA Confidential as book and then brought to the big screen.

Not the book I expected
I ordered this book expecting it to be chock full of cases that were regarded as "too sensitive" to be portrayed on "Dragnet" in the late 50's. Instead, it's more of an essay on the LAPD of that time.Of the cases presented, I believe only two were really too depraved to have been presented on the show, and these get only a few pages each.The rest have to do with burglars, hold ups, and a few murders.

There are a lot of good stories within, and insights into how police work was conducted at the time, but the drive of the book loses steam about three chapters from the end.

Brilliant! Best Cop Book ever!
It's amazing that 50 years after it was published this book is still a relevant account of police work in Los Angeles. It still captures the courage, determination, and even fear, involved with law enforcement. But, it now reads like a retro "cop talk" diary from the extraordinary Jack Webb.His language and tone is a peek back into the past, when Los Angeles was a much smaller place and a sense of community still existed. I love this book and I highly recommend it for anyone that has an interest in that time and place.

The Badge, then and now.
I remember watching "Dragnet" and "Badge 714" when I was a kid.I came across the book "The Badge" during my tenth year in high school, which was in 1960.I read it several times and remember being amazed by the contrast in the way Jack Webb wrote and the way he protrayed the Sgt. Joe Friday character.For some strange reason, this book has always been in the back of my mind, and so when the recent release of "The Black Dahlia" came about in the movie circuit, I, just on a whim, went to Amazon.com to see if an old edition of "The Badge" was floating around somewhere.I remembered that Jack Webb had written about this case in His book.I could not believe that, not only was it available, but available for under five frogskins, and new too boot!!!

I am now in the process of reading this book again, and am again amazed at Jack Webb's ability to write.He was so far ahead of his time, in his ability to tell a story back then that even now, his writing is beyond the typical codswample that is available today.Jack Webb was always so robotic in the way He acted, moving about like he had a two-by-four piece of lumber tied to his spine.His writing ability was another story.

I am once again amazed by this man's ability to write a story.Anyone who buys this book and reads it will NOT be disappointed.In fact, I would suggest that quite the opposite will be true.

GOOD READ FOR CRIME BUFFS
THE BOOK GIVES A GOODINSIGHT TO THE HISTORY OF THE LAPD.....IT LETS YOU INTO CRIMES THAT HAVE HAUNTED THE AREA FOR YEARS AND GIVES YOU AN APPRECIATION TO THOSE WHO HAVE TO WEAR THE ACTUAL BADGE. ... Read more

Product Description
In this crime novel, there is a man on the loose in America. A man who kills for the sheer pleasure of spilling blood. A man who rearranges the mutilated bodies of his victims in positions that, to him, have the purity of art. The author also wrote "The Big Nowhere" and "Suicide Hill". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Chilling and coldly compelling
Real horror does not shout,it whispers.Dangerous people are seldom prone to rant and rave but go about their work in silence and with an outward appearance of normality. This strikes home forcibly with Ellroy's masterly but chilly book
Martin Plunkett is a serial killer and his narrative interspersed with newspaper clippings tells of his murderous and depraved odyssey in 70's America.Evil told in the accents and tone of one recounting a trip to the shopping mall,

Midway through the book Ellroy pulls a twist that throws the reader shrwedly off balance and keeps him that way throughout

I admired the book but without really liking it,maybe its that I like a moral centre to my crime writing and this is a massively amoral book
Just like the century that spawned it Ellroy's book is a fascinating,compelling thing but dont look for the easy resolution of empty comfort of the archetypal crime novel
Fiction as reality ,not as escapism

Excellent Ellroy -- back in print retitled
This very good early Ellroy has been reissued with the title "Killeron the Road", standard book number 038080896X .

High-quality read from a very high-quality author
James Ellroy's mastery for dark crime tales comes to the fore here with possibly his best book (certainly ranking alongside 'American Tabloid' for plot, and 'The Black Dahlia' for the characterisation of obsessives). Thetale is the startling autobiography of a captured serial killer, MartinMichael Plunkett, from his childhood, through his career as a killer allacross America, to his eventual capture by and mind-games with FBI SerialKiller Task Force agent Thomas Dusenberry.

Plunkett is an articulateruthless genius, and his narration, is such that it keeps you glued to thepages. As in much of Ellroy's work, all the characters, policeman,murderers, victims are painted with a dark brush. The result, as always, isa book which is almost impossible to put down.

Ellroy
A very unusual crime novel, with the plot all in the last 10 pages, using typical Ellroy news headlines we saw in LA Confidential. A study of the criminal subculture that 99% of the population will never come acrossunless they are robbed or murdered. For those of faint hearts, or otherwisenormal, this is very pornographic, sick and violent. ... Read more

Product Description
James Ellroy's prose, in many ways as complex as any in the Western literary canon, strung together sensational stories of crime and catastrophe. The significance of his writing to Western culture has yet to be fully explored. Author Peter Wolfe offers us the first book-length study of Ellroy in English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Deep Psychological Study of the Demon Dog of Crime Fiction
This is the first major critical literary study of what noir author James Ellroy has first aspired to be, then modestly dubbed himself as the greatest living writer of American crime fiction. I agree with his opinion of himself. He is too bloody, gory and sick for many; when my father was still alive I loaned him "The Big Nowhere" hot off the press and a week later after his reading he handed it back, saying, "Too dark for me." The only other comparable authors in this genre are George Pellecanos and Elmore Leonard, but even they do not meet the psychological complexity of Ellroy's amazing growth and development. Wolfe very correctly attributes the Freudian motifs of Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) as a major influence on Ellroy in terms of family and personal dysfunction, and also cites inspirations from Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hammett, Chandler, Wambaugh and others -- but stresses that Ellroy's work is original, not derivative. Wolfe's scholarship is admirable and he traces Ellroy's writing obsessions to the murder of his mother, a theme that runs through all his books, and carefully dissects his life from a drug-and-alcohol/petty thief pervert misfit to a redeemed, sober, clean and straight novelist, beginning with his first three books, then the "L.A. Noir Trilogy" of policeman's Lloyd Hopkins books, the subsequent "L.A. Quartet" of The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz; Ellroy's unsuccessful cold-case search for his mother's killer in "My Dark Places"; and finally, a searing analysis of his masterwork "Underworld USA" trilogy beginning with American Tabloid, and ascending in The Cold Six Thousand. I can hardly wait for the "Underworld" conclusion in the Fall of 2009 with "Blood's A Rover". (A 10,000-word excerpt appeared in the December 2008 issue of Playboy). Not since the 1965 literary critique and analysis of Raymond Chandler in "Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go" or Francis M. Nevin's study of Cornell Woolrich in "First you Dream, Then You Die," or Roy Hoope's "Cain" has crime fiction been rewarded with such astute, piercing analysis. Wolfe pulls no punches and if there are flaws in Ellroy's works he is quick to explore them; but his deserved admiration is long overdue and while this book may not be the last word on Ellroy, it is the most defining since the documentary film "Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction."As John LeCarre observes in a jacket blurb, Ellroy "is a lucky man" to have Wolfe as his critic. It all points to one inscrutable fact: Ellroy is not just the greatest crime fiction writer ever -- he is one of the greatest writers of any genre, anyplace, anytime. ... Read more

Product Description
El 15 de enero de 1947, en un solar de Los Angeles, aparecio el cadaver desnudo y seccionado en dos de una mujer joven. El medico forense determino que la habian torturado durante dias. Elizabeth Short, de 22 años, llamada la Dalia Negra, llevara a los detectives a los bajos fondos de Hollywood, para asi involucrar a ciertas personas adineradas de Los Angeles. Ambos estan obsesionados por lo que fue la vida de la Dalia Negra, y, sobre todo, por capturar al individuo que la asesino/On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a young Hollywood hopeful, had been brutally murdered. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history. In this fictionalized treatment of a real case, Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, both LA cops obsessed with the Black Dahlia, journey through the seamy underside of Hollywood to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.""Passionate, violent, frustrating...imaginative and bizarre."" (Los Angeles Times)""Building like a symphony, this is a wonderful, complicated, but accessible tale of ambition, insanity, passion and deceit."" (Publishers Weekly) ... Read more

Product Description
A single-volume edition of three of the novels featuring Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins of Los Angeles. The first involves the apparently random killings of 20 women, the second a multiple murder committed with a pre-Civil-War revolver, and the third a conspiracy of police corruption.Amazon.com Review
In the introduction to L.A. Noir, a collection of threecontemporary cop thrillersoriginally published in the early '80s,James Ellroy confesses his desire to match the suspense and terror ofThomas Harris's groundbreaking novel Red Dragon and tocreate a detective as compelling and as complex as Harris's Will Graham.His attempts to fulfill that desire introduce readers to Detective Sergeant LloydHopkins, a brilliantly flawed hero of sorts whom Ellroy describes as his"antidote to the sensitive candy-assed philosophizing private eye."

Written before Hannibal Lecter made his first appearance in print,before serial killer fiction had become a subgenre, Blood on theMoon, the first novel of the L.A. Noir trilogy, pits theracist, reactionary, sexually obsessed Hopkins against a sexuallymotivated serial killer whose intelligence and capacity for brutalitymatch the detective's own. In Because the Night, the second book in the trilogy, Hopkins once again confronts psychotic evil, thistime while investigating the possible connection between a multiplehomicide and the disappearance of a fellow cop. The trilogy concludeswith Suicide Hill, a manhunt-thriller in which Hopkins tracksdown a kidnapper and discovers among his colleagues a complex web ofpower, corruption, and lies.

Suspenseful, stark, and startling, the novels of the L.A. Noirtrilogy exhibit the seminal hallmarks of Ellroy's taut, haunting prose.His dark and disturbing portrait of Hopkins, a thoroughly unlikableprotagonist, drives the novels with unrelenting force, taking readersdown paths of they might not really want to explore. Readers seeking aprotagonist they can identify with, a hero they can like, probably won'tfind much to recommend in L.A. Noir, but Ellroy never meantHopkins to be a likable hero. Instead, he has created what he calls "acomplex monument to a basically shitty guy," and in doing so he laid thegroundwork for the novels that have earned him a seat at the table oftruly great crime novelists. In all, L.A. Noir offers Ellroy'sadmirers a chance to look back a few years and see the primitiveintimations of the style and substance that would later characterize hisL.A. Quartet series, but it is no primer for beginners, who might bemore readily wooed by the more refined tension and complexity of hislater novels. --L.A. Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Very good (although not his best)
I am a huge James Ellroy fan - having read almost all of his work - and while this trilogy is good, it is far from his best work. For example American Tabloid, LA Confidential and Black Dahlia are all much better.

If you are not familiar with James Ellroy it is worth noting that his prose style does not find universal favour. He writes in very short, punchy sentences - personally I find it an effective and entertaining style but it does irritate others.

It is interesting to note that in his introduction Ellroy claims that he wrote the second and third parts of the trilogy because after completing the first part he read Red Dragon by Thomas Harris which he acknowledges as a far superior book and felt he need to do better. On one level he is correct, Red Dragon is a superior book and Will Graham is a superior and more interesting 'hero'. However, he is harsh on himself - these are still very good books.

As is usual in Ellroy novels he concentrates on the psychological motivation of the main characters (sometimes, slightly simplistically, tying the whole personality back to a defining moment from childhood). Ellroy has the skill to carry this off and it works well (although he does flirt with caricature).

Overall, very good and certainly well worth reading although, in my opinion, not the place to start if you are new to Ellroy

The Master Before He Got His Chops
First: Ellroy is the greatest living American writer.Second: I'm sorryto report that this collection of early novels was a big disappointment. If you haven't read him, I wouldn't recommend starting here.As the manhimself might put it, "it didn't jazz me."In fact, I put itdown after reading the whole of *Blood on the Moon* (the first of thesethree), and trudging half-way through *Because the Night* (number two). The biggest problem is that it's not really "noir."The prose isweak, predictable, numbingly repetetive and overwrought.It reads muchmore like the kind of massmarket, serial-killer fiction that clutter thetables of New York City street salesmen (think *Hannibal*) than Ellroy'sgreat masterpieces (every novel after and including *The Black Dahlia*). Much of the prose is downright annoying (how many ways can he use the word"picayune"?).

Although there are glimpses of the darkness andpassion that Ellroy would perfect in his later novels, I can't recommendshelling out for the hardcover.If you must, you must.Hey, I know whatit's like:I'm an Ellroy addict, and I know how it is to "jones"for his pitiless, high octane vision. This isn't it. Alas.

Insight into the young Ellroy
Anyone who knows the slightest thing about James Ellroy should realise that this early trilogy was a process of evolution for the stunning writer of truly wonderful fiction like American Tabloid. OK it's not as denselyplotted but therein lies the magnificence of this trilogy. It's stillexpertly crafted and immensely readable. I read Blood on the Moon in onewhirlwind of a day. Enjoy the ride Ellroy takes you on and don't concernyourself with meaningless comparisons with his later work. Love LloydHopkins as you surely should. It's still in a league of it's own as far asyour average crime writing goes.

My boy Ellroy!
I read a lot of crime fiction, and nobody does what Ellroy does.Forget the fact that these are early Ellroy works. Forget the fact that they tale place in a different era than those visited in his more popular books (40's- 50's - 60's), that being the 1980's. Just groove on Ellroy's caffeinatedprose and bask in the glory of its radiance!

I love that these books takeplace in the '80's. When you read other Ellroys you wonder what his take onthe "modern world" would be. I found it just as relentless andglorious as the other time periods used in his later novels. Ellroy waswriting these at the same time Brett Easton Ellis was writing Less ThanZero, the same time that the movie To Live and Die in L.A. appeared intheatres. This is a time and place in American history with tremendousdramatic literary potential. The fact that Ellroy's characters and storylines could exist in the 40's, 50's or 60's, with bourbon and jazzreplacing cocaine and punk is a testement to Ellroy's undeniablebrilliance.

And Lloyd Hopkins, the hero of these novels? He lacks thecharm of a Spenser or Carella, posesses the demons and frailties of aRobicheaux or Scudder, but is still an Ellroy original. Love him or hatehim while you read these books, but I guarantee you'll miss him when you'redone.

Read L.A. Confidential or American Tabloid for the best Ellroythere is. Read L.A. Noir and just enjoy Ellroy.

To reader from San Diego, May 18th:
Do not give up on Ellroy because of LA NOIR.This collection is his weaker stuff.Try the LA Quartet( The BLack Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz) and American Tabloid.These are much betterexamples of Ellroys prose. ... Read more

Product Description
«Intensa y exuberante excelente. Trama de alto octanaje un libro poderoso el lector se queda sin aliento, estremecido y dispuesto a cambiar su punto de vista sobre la historia reciente de America.» ... Read more

Product Description
Dick Contino, a 50s accordion player, a star in the making, is destroyed by a draft-dodging scandal. His life is on the skids until he comes up with the idea of resurrecting his career with a fake kidnapping scam. Meanwhile a serial killer is on the loose. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of Ellroy's true stories, including the only two unsolved murder cases on police file in the author's home town in California. Original novellas, "Hollywood Shakedown" and "Tijuana Mon Amour" are also included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Best Ever Reader!
For a great unabridged read try this Books on Tape Audio edition read by Michael Prichard who adapts the character voices adroitly, showing an uncanny ear. He's an L.A. based actor who has read several hundred audiobooks; that's actually over 300! What a pro! There may or may not be other versions, but I for one will stick to the best!

Couldn't stop reading it.
Crime wave is the book that made me the James Ellroy fan I am today.From the first sentence, I was hooked.

Crime wave is a book of short stories, actual true crime cases, and a few essays written by Ellroy for GQ Magazine.

Reading Ellroy is almost like singing along with a tune on the radio, it's all about rythm.Included are a story about Ellroy's Mother's unsolved murder and another fictitious story involving Dick Contino.The stories that I loved most of all though, were the stories told by Danny Getchell, the dirt digger for HUSH-HUSH magazine.

All in all, I loved Crime Wave because it is a look at 1950s crime in L.A.I think Ellroy fans and non-Ellroy fans alike, should do themselves a favor and pick up a copy of CRIME WAVE. ... Read more

Product Description
Ike King, a man who built his empire with blood and violence, faces a career change when his sons threaten to take that empire away from him. By the author of The Grifters and The Killer Inside Me. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Over-the-top raunchy fun
In the edition that I read, the foreword, written by Elmore Leonard, states "This book is terrible".Or something along those lines.Elmore Leonard really hated this book and reviewed it only resentfully onthe orders of his publisher; Jim Thompson's agent hated it and mostpublishers refused to consider it.It IS a terrible book, but only in thatit's such a cutting examination of an author's personal demons.If youhave any appreciation for the works of Nick Cave, or favor Thompson's moregritty writings (such as the last 1/2 of "Pop. 1280"), you can'thelp but enjoy this crazed anarchy of sex and killing and obscenity.It'shardcore even by 21st Century standards.... ... Read more

Product Description
James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential is film-noir crime fiction akin to Chinatown,Hollywood Babylon, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Jim Thompson. It's about threetortured souls in the 1950s L.A.P.D.: Ed Exley, the clean-cut cop who lives shivering in the shadow of hisdad, a legendary cop in the same department; Jack Vincennes, a cop who advises a Police Squad- like TV show and busts movie stars for payoffs from sleazy Hush-Hush magazine; and Bud White,a detective haunted by the sight of his dad murdering his mom.Ellroy himself was traumatized as a boy by his party-animal mother's murder. (See his memoir My Dark Places for the whole sordid story.)So it is clear that Bud is partly autobiographical. But Exley, whose shiny reputation conceals a dark secret,and Vincennes, who goes showbiz with a vengeance, reflect parts of Ellroy, too. L.A. Confidential holds enough plots for two or three books: the cops chase stolen gangland herointhrough a landscape littered with not-always-innocent corpses while succumbing to sexy sirens who havebeen surgically resculpted to resemble movie stars; a vile developer--based (unfairly) on Walt Disney-- schemes to make big bucks off Moochie Mouse; and the cops compete with the crooks to see who can bemore corrupt and violent. Ellroy's hardboiled prose is so compressed that some of his rat-a-tat paragraphsare hard to follow. You have to read with attention as intense as his—and that is very intense indeed. Buthe richly rewards the effort. He may not be as deep and literary as Chandler, but he belongs on the sametop-level shelf. ... Read more