James Ellroy (b.1948,) fully Lee Earle Ellroy, is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. A practitioner of hard-boiled fiction, or fiction noir, he is well known for his crime and detective novels that explore the sinister eras of modern American history, notably quasi-historical police corruption in Los Angeles in the 1940s.
Ellroy was born in Los Angeles. In 1958, his mother was murdered in a case that remains unsolved. As a young man, he spent much time reading in public libraries and engaging in petty crimes and occasional homelessness.
In 1979, Ellroy began his first novel, the semiautobiographical Brown’s Requiem (1981.) Several crime novels followed throughout the 1980s. The Black Dahlia (1987,) based on a case similar to his mother’s murder, was hailed as a tour de force; it was followed by three more novels, The Big Nowhere (1988,) LA Confidential (1990; film, 1997,) and White Jazz (1992,) together constituting the ‘LA Quartet.’
Ellroy’s most recent trilogy, including American Tabloid (1995) and The Cold Six Thousand (2001,) concerns politics and racism in American history. Ellroy’s memoirs are My Dark Places (1996) and The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women (2010.)
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I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don’t want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.
—James Ellroy
Topics: Stress
I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.
—James Ellroy
Topics: Authority
The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is kitsch and Mickey Mouse watches and all this intolerable stuff…
—James Ellroy
Topics: Twentieth Century, Gratitude
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