La Quartet
1 primary work • 4 total works
Book 2
Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Gangland intrigue and Hollywood sleaze. Three cops caught in a hellish web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. All three men have purchased tickets to a nightmare.
Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three LAPD 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 murder of a beautiful young woman in 1947 Los Angeles sparks a great investigation in which Bucky Bleichert, Lee Blanchard, L.A.P.D. Warrants Squad cops, ex-boxers, friends, and adversaries become obsessed by the case.
Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boom town at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein is in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord and mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect. Told with his trademark blistering and relentless prose-poetry, White Jazz is a bleak and powerful nightmare of a crime thriller, and a fitting conclusion to the LA Quartet. It is one of the greatest crime writers of all time, writing at his best.