From the modern master of noir comes a novel based on the real-life Hollywood fixer Freddy Otash, the malevolent monarch of the 1950s L.A. underground, and his Tinseltown tabloid Confidential magazine.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 ...

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • James Ellroy—Demon Dog of American Letters—goes straight to the tragic heart of 1962 Hollywood with a wild riff on the Marilyn Monroe death myth in an astonishing, behind-the-headlines crime epic.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’s looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymak...

**From bestselling, award-winning author James Ellroy, "the neo-noir eminence of L.A. crime fiction" (The New Yorker)—a gritty, fast-paced historical crime thriller set in 1962 Los Angeles during the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis"The Freddy Otash novels will be mentioned . . . as some of Ellroy's best work.” —NPR**It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney G...

"One of the strengths of this true-crime anthology series comes simply from its astonishing variety . . . it would be tough to better this collection." — BooklistThe 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including Peter Landesman's article about female sex slaves (the most requested and widely read New York Times story of 2004), a piece from ...

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia.Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer—a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.Klein's been hung o...

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia.A rip-roaring, devilishly wild ride through the bloody end of the 1960's. It's dark baby, and hot hot hot.Martin Luther King assassinated. Robert Kennedy assassinated. Los Angeles, 1968. Conspiracies theories are taking hold. On the horizon looms the Democratic Convention in Chicago and cons...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERAN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEARIt is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. 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. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angel...

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Murder, mayhem and dirty cops on the make against the backdrop of anti-communist hysteria in L.A. in 1950.It’s Los Angeles in the new year of 1950. The Communist Scare is heating up. Gangsters vie for control of the town. The Hollywood studios are feuding with the unions. Then a dead body with its eyes gouged out turns up.The investigating officer, Sheriff’s deputy Danny Upshaw, is obsessed with the murder case that no one else ...

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. The Black Dahlia is the haunting and harrowing book that put James Ellroy on the map as one of the most electrifying writers on the scene.On January 15, 1947, the brutally mutilated body of Elizabeth Short is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia, becoming the center of a media frenzy and cultural fixation.Caught up in the investigation are two young cops, Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert and Lee...

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia.In this savagely audacious novel, James Ellroyplants a pipe bomb under the America in the 1960s, lights the fuse, and watches the shrapnel fly. On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their job: to clean up the JFK hit’s loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a...

In James Ellroy's riveting second novel, an ambitious beat cop is hot on the trail of a serial killer who frequents L.A. dive bars and preys on the fallen women he finds there.Los Angeles, 1951. For Officer Fred Underhill, the job is all about the wonder, an elusive quality he finds while dealing with the city’s drunks, hopheads, gunsels, and burglars. When he’s not reveling in the glory of cleaning up the streets, he’s on the green or scoring women. But Underhill’...

Three detectives descend into the underbelly of Los Angeles, where all the classic elements of an Ellroy novel—police corruption, Hollywood scandal, and organized crime—collide in this bestselling installment in the L.A. Quartet.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. Three LAPD detectives get involved. Ed Exley wants to eclipse his poli...