James Ellroy Book order

'Nobody does crime like James Ellroy . . . One of Ellroy's best works in years' Sunday Times'This is the master of darkness at his incomparable best - simply impossible to put down' Daily MailLos Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer 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 moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash.The freewheeling Freddy O. Tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim Opportunity is Love. Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe's death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle. We are with him as he tears through all those who block his path to the truth. We are with him as he penetrates the faux-sunshine of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and the shuck of Camelot. We are with him as he falters, and grasps for love beyond opportunity. We are with him as he tracks Marilyn Monroe's horrific last charade through a nightmare L.A. that he served to create - and as he confronts his complicity and his own raging madness.It's the Summer of '62, baby. Freddy O.'s got a hot date with history. The savage Sixties are ready to pop. The Rolling Stones proclaim it best: We're just a shout away. The Enchanters is a transcendent work of American popular fiction. It is James Ellroy at his most crazed, brilliant, provocative, profanely hilarious, and stop-your-heart tender. It is a luminous psychological drama. It is an unparalleled thrill ride. It is resoundingly the great American crime novel.'This entire book is one gleefully violent foul-mouthed research note. It's vivid, gripping, surreal' Spectator

Freddy Otash is the man in the know and the man to know in '50s L.A. He operates with two simple rules - he'll do anything but commit murder and he'll never work with the commies. Freddy is an ex-L.A. cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood - and it got to him bad. So Chief William H. Parker canned him. Now he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp - and, most notably, the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet - and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink and the scurrilous skank on the feckless foibles of misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites and potzo politicians. Freaky Freddy outs them all! In Widespread Panic, we traverse the depths of '50s L.A. and dig on the inner workings of Confidential. You'll go to Burt Lancaster's lushly appointed torture den; you'll groove overhyped legend James Dean as Freddy's chief stooge; you'll be there for Freddy's ring-a-ding rendezvous with Liz Taylor; you'll be front and centre as Freddy anoints himself the 'Tattle Tyrant Who Held Hollywood Hostage'.

The Black Dahlia depicts the infrastructure of L.A.'s most sensational murder case. A young cop morphs into the obsessed lover and lust-crazed avenger. His rogue investigation is a one-way ticket to hell

"America was never innocent." Thus begins the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. It's James Ellroy's pop history of the 1960s, his window-peeper's view of government misconduct, his dirty trickster's take on the great events of an incendiary era. It's a tour de force of the American idiom, and an acknowledged masterpiece. American Tabloid gives us Jack Kennedy's ride, seen from an insider's perspective. We're there for the rigged 1960 election. We're there for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. We're the eyes and ears and souls of three rogue cops who've signed on for the ride and come to see Jack as their betrayer. We're Jack's pimps and hatchet men, and we're there for that baroque slaying in Dallas.The Cold Six Thousand takes us from Dallas to Vietnam to Memphis to the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. We're rubbing shoulders with RFK and MLK, calamitous klansmen, noted mafiosi. We're forced to relive the American sixties--and we come away breathless.The first two books of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy revisit the most anarchic decade in our history. They are defined by their brutal linguistic flair and reckless panache.

This time the ride takes us from Dallas to Vietnam to Las Vegas to Memphis to Cuba to the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. A kid private eye clashes with a mob goon and an enforcer for FBI director Edgar Hoover in L.A.

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. There's two dead cops in a dive off the jazz-club strip. And three men and one woman have a hot date with history. Elmer Jackson is a corrupt Vice cop. He's a flesh peddler and a bagman for the L.A. Chief of Police. Hideo Ashida is a crime-lab whiz, lashed by anti-Japanese rage. Dudley Smith is PD hardnose working Army Intelligence. He's gone rogue and gone all-the-way fascist. Joan Conville was born rogue. She's a defrocked Navy lieutenant and a war profiteer to her core. L.A. '42. Homefront madness. Wartime inferno--This Storm is James Ellroy's most audacious novel yet. It is by turns savage, tender, elegiac. It lays bare and celebrates crazed Americans of all stripes. It is a masterpiece.

The Black Dahlia depicts the infrastructure of L.A.'s most sensational murder case. White Jazz gives us the tortured confession of a cop who's gone to the bad - killer, slum landlord and parasitic exploiter.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Los Angeles. December, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. War fever and racial hatred grip the city. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. LAPD captain William H. Parker is superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith—Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. Kay Lake is a twenty-one-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that brilliantly illuminates these four driven souls—comrades, rivals, lovers, history’s pawns. Here, Ellroy gives us the party at the edge of the abyss and the precipice of America’s ascendance. Perfidia is that moment, spellbindingly captured.

It 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-Americansbut now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins.

Delving into the complexities of the writing process, the author shares insights from years of experience in creating emotionally charged narratives. The book explores the struggles and triumphs of a novelist dedicated to honing his craft, offering a deep reflection on the artistic journey. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, readers are invited to understand the nuances of storytelling, character development, and the relentless pursuit of literary excellence.