Showing results by author "James Ellroy" in All Categories

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.

Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boomtown at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein: in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect, 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 out as bait, 'a bad cop to draw the heat', and the heat's coming from all sides.

A startling panorama of Los Angeles in the '50s. New Year's Eve as 1949 turns to 1950, Los Angeles: The City of Angels has becomes the city of the Angel of Death. Communist witch hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a maelstrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness.

It's 1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age - an age that will last until the 1,000 days of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Peter Bondurant, Howard Hughes’ right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa’s hit man. Kemper Boyd, employed by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell, a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy’s drive against organised crime.

A neo-noir crime novel from the legendary crime novelist James Ellroy. Los Angeles, 15th January 1947: a beautiful young woman walked into the night and met her horrific destiny. Five days later, her tortured body was found drained of blood and cut in half. The newspapers called her 'The Black Dahlia'. Two cops are caught up in the investigation and embark on a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life....

I James Ellroys anmelderroste kriminalroman "Ingenmandsland" møder vi tre politimænd, der hver især er fanget i et spind af korruption, bedrag og bestialske mord i 1940'erne og 50'ernes Los Angeles. Historien udfolder sig i kølvandet på den berygtede "Sleepy Lagoon" sag, hvor mordet på en ung mexicaner, ledte til arrestationen og fængslingen af en stor gruppe unge mexicanere. Perioden er præget af store protester, da meget tyder på, at de dømte ikke har fået en fair rettergang.

January '42. LA reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops tag it as 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. 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.

"Underworld USA" constitue la troisième partie de la trilogie de James Ellroy, où se dévoile en trois moments-clefs la construction d'une Amérique sombre, pantin effrayant dont les fils sont tirés depuis les profondeurs de la terre. Entremêlant les personnages historiques de la présidence de Nixon, avec la plus inventive des fictions, "Underworld USA" livre un portrait panoramique et paranoïaque d'une déchéance annoncée.

Dallas, November 2, 1963. Wayne Tedrow, Jr., has arrived to kill a man. The fee is $6,000. He finds himself instead in the middle of a cover-up following JFK’s assassination. There follows a hellish five-year ride through the sordid underbelly of public policy via Las Vegas, Howard Hughes, Vietnam, CIA dope dealing, Cuba, sleazy showbiz, racism and the Klan. This is the 1960s under Ellroy’s blistering lens, the icons of the era mingled with cops, killers, hoods and provocateurs.

It’s 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are dead. The Mob, Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover are in a struggle for America’s soul, drawing into their murderous conspiracies the damned and the soon-to-be damned. Wayne Tedrow Jr: assassin, dope cooker, mouthpiece for all sides, loyal to none. Dwight Holly: Hoover’s enforcer and hellish conspirator in terrible crimes.

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-Americans - but now war fever grips 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 Angeles Police. He’s superbly gifted but consumed by dubious ideology.

Los 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.

From the Demon Dog of American literature comes James Ellroy’s Hollywood Death Trip. Dig into a quintet of highly stylized true crime that delves into some of the most notorious, unsolved, midcentury-Hollywood murders. Ellroy’s wicked baritone draws listeners into a series of hellacious crimes; beginning with the heartbreaking and gruesome murder of his own mother. Next, it’s the Karen Kupcinet Killing - her body, found strangled just days after JFK’s assassination. Beautiful Stephanie Gorman, a debutante killed by a stranger, made Los Angeles lock its doors at night. The series concludes with the salacious snuff of actor Sal Mineo, whose death is a fitting epigraph for a series set in “Hollyweird”.

Freddy is an ex-LA cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood—and it got to him bad. Now he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp—and, most notably, the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. Welcome to the world of the malevolent monarch of the Hollywood underground—a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films and strange bedfellows. In Widespread Panic, we traverse the depths of '50s LA and dig on the inner workings of Confidential.