James Ellroy

This is the 9th post in our Author of the Week series.



James Ellroy was born Lee Earle Ellroy in 1948 in California. In 1958 his mother was murdered and the case was never solved. He had a hard time dealing with the emotions of his mother's death and never finished school. He started drinking heavily and engaging in small crimes. It was after he was arrested that he cleaned up his act. He worked as a caddy while pursuing a career in writing.

In 1981, he published Brown's Requiem his first novel which drew upon his experiences as a caddy. He followed this up by two novels and then his Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy.

These novels though they had a small following did not gain him much success. It was when he published the L.A. Quartet that he began to receive widespread popularity. The L.A. Quartet consists of: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz

In 1995 he published American Tabloid which TIME magazine named the fiction book of the year.

It was after this that he published My Dark Places which detailed his mother's murder and his own investigation.

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