Ellroy, James (1948– )

US novelist. His novels document the development of post-war Los Angeles and explore the sordid side of US society. In his later works Ellroy has played with the formal structure of the novel, cutting between traditional narrative, first person observations, media-style excerpts, and official reports. This he has achieved most successfully in the popular ‘LA Quartet’, comprising the novels The Black Dahlia (1987), The Big Nowhere (1988), LA Confidential (1990), and White Jazz (1992). LA Confidential was adapted into an award-winning film in 1997.

Drawing both from an established literary tradition and the images of 1950s film noir, Ellroy's writing career has been one of constant evolution. His first novel was a detective mystery, Brown's Requiem (1980), influenced by Raymond Chandler. He later abandoned the tradition of the loner private eye, preferring instead tales in which the enforcers of law and order become implicit in the corruption that pervades Los Angeles. His books have become increasingly experimental, using multiple narrators and blurring the boundaries between autobiography, fiction, and historical fact.

Ellroy first turned to the LA police novel with a trilogy – Blood on the Moon (1984), Because the Night (1984), and Suicide Hill (1986). Following the success of the ‘LA Quartet’ he embarked on a more ambitious trilogy, ‘Underworld USA’, intending to fictionalize the history of the USA, starting with the Bay of Pigs debacle and ending with Richard Nixon's resignation. The first instalment, American Tabloid (1995) deftly interweaves public figures and characters from Ellroy's earlier novels, skilfully playing with long-standing conspiracy theories surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. It is Ellroy's most formally innovative novel to date. The second volume in the trilogy, The Cold Six Thousand, was published in 2001.

Ellroy's feverish, bloody narratives are fuelled in part by his own problematic childhood and history of youthful delinquency, alcoholism, and substance abuse, as well as the murder of his mother when he was a child. He published an illuminating autobiography, My Dark Places, in 1996. In this he recounted not only his youthful years and the impact they had on his career as a writer, but also his efforts to track down his mother's killer 30 years after her death. Ellroy has also published a serial killer novel entitled Silent Terror/Killer on the Road (1986), and is the author of numerous short stories and essays.