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L.A. Quartet Series

This series delves into the gritty underbelly of 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles. It follows interconnected stories that expose deep-seated crime and corruption. Each installment introduces new characters, but all are bound by the suffocating atmosphere of the post-war metropolis. It's a raw look at crime, moral decay, and human nature in the city of angels.

Cuarteto de Los Ángeles - 1: La Dalia Negra
White Jazz
L.A. Confidential
The big nowhere

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    Cuarteto de Los Ángeles - 1: La Dalia Negra

    • 461 pages
    • 17 hours of reading
    3.8(83113)Add rating

    El 15 de enero de 1947, en un solar desocupado de Los Ángeles, apareció el cadáver, desnudo y seccionado en dos, de una mujer joven. El médico forense determinó que la habían torturado durante días. Elizabeth Short, de 22 años, llamada Dalia Negra, llevará a los detectives a los bajos fondos de Hollywood, para así involucrar a ciertas personas adineradas de Los Ángeles. Basándose en este suceso, Ellroy construye esta novela, en la que plasma la relación entre dos policías, ex boxeadores, y enamorados de la misma mujer. Ambos, además, obsesionados por lo que fue la vida de la Dalia Negra y, sobre todo, por capturar al individuo que la asesinó.

    Cuarteto de Los Ángeles - 1: La Dalia Negra
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  2. 2

    The big nowhere

    4.1(624)Add rating

    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".

    The big nowhere
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  3. 3

    L.A. Confidential

    • 496 pages
    • 18 hours of reading
    4.1(1320)Add rating

    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 LAPD detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers. The novel takes these cops on a sprawling epic of brutal violence and the murderous seedy side of Hollywood. One of the best crime novels ever written, it is the heart of Ellroy's four-novel masterpiece, the LA Quartet, and an example of crime writing at its most powerful.

    L.A. Confidential
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  4. 4

    White Jazz

    • 416 pages
    • 15 hours of reading
    4.0(8036)Add rating

    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.

    White Jazz