L.A. Quartet
by4 books in this series
Four of James Ellroy's most popular crime novels featuring the infamous Dudley Smith, which include: 'The Black Dahlia', 'The Big Nowhere', 'L.A. Confidential' and 'White Jazz'.
#1 - The Black Dahlia
'The king of macho noir' GUARDIAN
'The American Dostoevsky' JOYCE CAROL OATES
'One of the great American writers of our time' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted and paranoid' STEPHEN KING
'One of the most original and daring writers alive' INDEPENDENT
Los Angeles, 15th January 1947. A beautiful young woman walks into the night and meets a horrific destiny.
Five days later, her tortured body is found drained of blood and cut in half. The newspapers call her 'The Black Dahlia'. For two cops, what begins as an investigation becomes a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.
'The American Dostoevsky' JOYCE CAROL OATES
'One of the great American writers of our time' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted and paranoid' STEPHEN KING
'One of the most original and daring writers alive' INDEPENDENT
Los Angeles, 15th January 1947. A beautiful young woman walks into the night and meets a horrific destiny.
Five days later, her tortured body is found drained of blood and cut in half. The newspapers call her 'The Black Dahlia'. For two cops, what begins as an investigation becomes a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.
#2 - The Big Nowhere
A startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. 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. The second of the LA Quartet, the epigraph for The Big Nowhere is a passage from a novel; "It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice- Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness."
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. The second of the LA Quartet, the epigraph for The Big Nowhere is a passage from a novel; "It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice- Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness."
#3 - LA Confidential
'The king of macho noir' GUARDIAN
'The American Dostoevsky' JOYCE CAROL OATES
'One of the great American writers of our time' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted and paranoid' STEPHEN KING
'One of the most original and daring writers alive' INDEPENDENT
Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as crooked 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...The novel takes these cops on a sprawling epic of brutal violence and the murderous seedy side of Hollywood. One of the best (and longest) 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.
'The American Dostoevsky' JOYCE CAROL OATES
'One of the great American writers of our time' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted and paranoid' STEPHEN KING
'One of the most original and daring writers alive' INDEPENDENT
Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as crooked 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...The novel takes these cops on a sprawling epic of brutal violence and the murderous seedy side of Hollywood. One of the best (and longest) 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.
#4 - White Jazz
'The king of macho noir' GUARDIAN
'The American Dostoevsky' JOYCE CAROL OATES
'One of the great American writers of our time' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted and paranoid' STEPHEN KING
'One of the most original and daring writers alive' INDEPENDENT
Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boom town 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. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--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: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time...
'The American Dostoevsky' JOYCE CAROL OATES
'One of the great American writers of our time' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted and paranoid' STEPHEN KING
'One of the most original and daring writers alive' INDEPENDENT
Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boom town 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. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--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: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time...