»My Dark Places

James Ellroy's superb confessional work dances around every other piece of autobiography I have read. Ellroy's staccato style, reminiscent of a telegraph minus the STOPs, lays bare his ugly emotions, his raw desire, and his rich ascent to society after the gruesome murder of his mother.

Ellroy digs deeply into his unravelling mind as he examines the circumstances of her death. He looks hard at the Los Angeles (and area) Sheriff's Department; at the LAPD; at the local law enforcement; he digs into his father's unruly life; and finally he spends more than a year working intimately with a former cop to re-open the investigation into the killing.

Many of the details are lurid examples of Los Angeles noir: the Black Dahlia killing; the Bloody Christmas episode; and the infamous cocaine-deal murders surrounding "The Cotton Club"; Ellroy digs up myriad other incidents, and sprinkles them liberally through his narrative. The narrative: imagine William S. Burroughs amounts of physical and mental cruelty in the story, but with a much greater grasp on the narrative flow. The development that Ellroy shows in his characters as the story progresses amazes me: he has a phenomenal understanding of the characters, and of the world of Los Angeles crime.