Sex, Crime, and Cops as told by James Ellroy
There is just something about James Ellroy’s writing that I like. For any of you who have heard of, or better yet seen the film “L.A. Confidential,” you have some idea of the type of work he does. While the movie was based on his book of the same name, the plot of the film was different in many respects, but did follow the theme of the book to a tee. Some of the characters in the film, primarily the veteran cops, appear in other books of Ellroy’s, and the L.A.P.D. in the 1950's is a favorite strip mine of his. He has become one of America’s predominant crime novelists and is a prolific writer we can expect to see even more work from in the near future.
James Ellroy comes from as fractured a background as some of his characters. Raised in L.A., his parents divorced when he was quite young, and only a few short years later his mother was murdered. He went to live with his father, which started a downward spiral of crime, drugs, and abandonment. Ellroy’s father died when he was a late teen, and it wasn’t until many years later did he sober up and begin to conceive of his first novel.
His books have been inspired by a lifetime love of crime novels. Introduced to them as small child, when he read “The Hardy Boys”, he continued to read any kind of crime novel he could as the years went on. One of the first of these books was a chronicle of the L.A.P.D., which he became infatuated with.
Ellroy’s work is characteristically on the edge, gritty, and unafraid of offending anyone or anything. This could also be said for the man. I have seen two or three appearances made by him on television at various award shows (like when he received a GQ Man of the Year Award a couple years back), news clips, etc, and have always remarked how blatantly honest he is, even if he appears foul, and almost always politically incorrect. He curses in front of whoever is there, regardless of what event he may be at, and says what he thinks. Whether you like him or dislike him, he is certainly different. His “you get what you see” attitude translates very much into his work. If you are familiar with the man, you will recognize his writing easily, and if you are familiar with his writing, you should be able to picture the man.
After seeing “L.A. Confidential,” which I don’t mind saying is my favorite movie, I wondered
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