**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...

CHOSEN BY TIME MAGAZINE AS ONE OFTHE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR"ONE HELLISHLY EXCITING RIDE."--Detroit Free PressThe '50s are finished. Zealous young senator Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office. J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new communist nation."HARD-BITTEN. . . ...

This "impressive crime anthology" presents a century of American greed, crime and comeuppance by some of the genre's greatest authors ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).James Ellroy, the author of such noir classics as The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, joins forces with award-winning editor Otto Penzler to present this treasure trove of stories. Ranging from the 1920s to the present day, this collection represents noir at its best...

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...

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...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fascinating account of a double tragedy: one physical, the other psychological.”—Truman CapoteThis is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.“A complex story of tragic proportions . . . more ambitious than In Cold Blood and equally compelling!”—The New York Ti...

"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 ...

January '42. L.A. reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese residents are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city.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. ...

James Ellroy's deep dive into the psyche of a serial killer who recounts his life in the shadows, a tale of American madness and obsession."The scariest book I've ever read." —Jason KellermanEven as a child, Martin Michael Plunkett was no ordinary boy. Extreme parental indifference marked him as an outcast. In his head, Plunkett crafted a second life, remaking himself in the guise of his favorite comic book villain. His mind fixated on dark thought...

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 ...

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. 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...