James Ellroy is een meester in het hardboiled misdaadgenre, bekend om zijn kenmerkende telegrafische stijl die onnodige woorden weglaat en vaak zinsfragmenten gebruikt. Zijn werken staan bekend om hun duistere humor, dichte plotontwikkeling en een meedogenloos pessimistische kijk op de wereld. Ellroy duikt in de weergave van Amerikaans autoritarisme, wat hem de bijnaam de "Demonenhond van de Amerikaanse misdaadfictie" heeft opgeleverd. Zijn romans worden geprezen om hun scherpe blik op de schaduwkanten van de samenleving en hun onmiskenbare stilistische urgentie, die de lezer meesleept in een draaikolk van spanning en cynisme.
'Gedumpt' vertelt opnieuw het verhaal van een moord op een jonge vrouw: Betty Jean Scales. Het is het adembenemende relaas van twee mannen, een schrijver en een detective, in hun hongerige zoektocht naar gerechtigheid. CPNB Maand van het spannende boek 1998.
This novel is set in Los Angeles, the city of angels that has become the city of the Angel of Death. It is about communist witch-hunts and about insanely violent killings which are terrorising the community.
A novel of the Kennedy era, portraying the president in a far from flattering light. There are three protagonists: a CIA agent who pimps for JFK, another agent who trains anti-Castro rebels, and a lawyer who is a Mafia hunter. Through their eyes are seen the conflicting interests of the Kennedys, the director of the FBI, organized crime, organized labor, Castro and Cuban exiles.
It is 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. For the three L.A.P.D. detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers
"L.A. is a city where it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad. At Central Police Station, Christmas 1951, cops beat up six suspects. This will change the careers of the three LAPD detectives involved"--http://trove.nla.gov.au
A young Las Vegas cop named Wayne Tedrow, Jr. travels through the 1960s, from JFK's assassination to Vietnam, unaware that J. Edgar Hoover is the one pulling the strings.
From the widely acclaimed author of" L.A. Confidential" comes the absorbing story of three man caught in a massive web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. ""The Big Nowhere" "makes you feel as if you are really in the Hollywood of 1950".--"The Wall Street Journal".
America's greatest crime writer investigates his mother's murder. On 21 June 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy left her home in California. She was found strangled the next day. Her ten year-old son James had been with her estranged husband all weekend and was informed of her death on his return. Her murderer was never found, but her death had an enduring effect on her son - he spent his teens and early adult years as a wino, petty burglar and derelict. Only later, through his obsession with crime fiction, triggered by his mother's murder, did Ellroy begin to delve into his past. Shortly after the publication of his groundbreaking novel WHITE JAZZ, he determined to return to Los Angeles and, with the help of veteran detective Bill Stoner, attempt to solve the 38-year-old killing. The result is one of the few classics of crime non- fiction and autobiography to appear in the last few decades; a hypnotic trip to America's underbelly and one man's tortured soul.
L.A., 1958. Corrupt Lt. Dave Klein, rapidly into a morass of bribes, fixes, and murder, hunts a thief whose crime-family victims don't want him caught and agrees to dig dirt on a Howard Hughes starlet--all while struggling to duck the fallout from his latest killing. As controversy over the proposed stadium for the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine brings city politics to a boil, Dave gets the word from mobster Mickey Cohen to help Sanderline Johnson, a half-wit croupier picked up in a raid, out his ninth-floor window before he can testify. The official verdict is flipped-out suicide, but the murder squeezes Dave between his department patron, detective chief Ed Exley; his would-be patron, Capt. Dudley Smith, deep in the Organization's pocket; double-dealing D.A. Bob Gallaudet; and Welles Noonan, a politically-minded US attorney with blood in his eye. Meanwhile, Exley puts Dave in charge of a break-in to the home of mobster J. C. Kafesjian, who wants him off the case; and Dave falls in love with Glenda Bledsoe, the starlet whose contract Hollywood mogul Hughes wants to break--and vows to protect her from the man whose money he's taking to break her. As if all this weren't trouble enough, somebody (Exley? Gallaudet? Dud Smith?) frames Dave for a murder that's been captured on film.
Krimi. A political noir tale set during the summer of 1968 in which the lives of three men collide in the pursuit of the leftist shadow figure known as the Red Goddess Joan
