Ellroy, James (1948-…), is an American author best known for his grimly realistic crime novels set in Los Angeles. Ellroy wrote a series of four novels collectively known as the “L.A. Quartet.” They consist of The Black Dahlia (1987), The Big Nowhere (1988), L.A. Confidential (1990), and White Jazz (1992). They are set in Los Angeles in the 1940’s and 1950’s and portray a gritty world of sex, violence, and crime. Ellroy also wrote “Underworld USA,” a series of three novels exploring American political life from 1958 through 1973. The novels are American Tabloid (1995), The Cold Six Thousand (2001), and Blood’s a Rover (2009). Ellroy began a second “L. A. Quartet” with Perfidia (2014) and This Storm (2019), which take place in Los Angeles during the frenzied period at the start of World War II (1939-1945).
Lee Earle Ellroy was born in Los Angeles on March 4, 1948. His own difficult early life formed the background for his fiction. His mother was murdered when he was 10. He wrote about the murder, which was never solved, in My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir (1996). He was expelled from high school and the military and became an alcoholic. From 1965 to 1977, he led a life of petty crime to support his drinking. In 1977, he determined to turn his life around and decided to become a writer.
Ellroy worked as a golf caddy while writing his first novels, Brown’s Requiem (1981) and Clandestine (1982). With the success of the novels Blood on the Moon and Because the Night (both 1984), he could write full-time. Ellroy’s other fiction includes Killer on the Road (originally published as Silent Terror) and Suicide Hill (both 1986), and Hollywood Nocturnes (1994). A collection of Ellroy’s magazine articles was published as Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A. (1999). An additional collection of Ellroy’s magazine articles and three short novels were published as Destination: Morgue! L.A. Tales (2004). Ellroy wrote two autobiographical works strongly influenced by the murder of his mother, My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse (2010).
