Ellroy, James

▪ 2002

      American author James Ellroy, long regarded a master of the crime-fiction genre, continued his move into the realm of general fiction with the publication of his novel The Cold Six Thousand in May 2001. The book, which covered the turbulent years between the assassination of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy in 1963 and that of his brother Robert in 1968, was the sequel to Ellroy's best-selling 1995 novel American Tabloid. As in his earlier crime novels, themes of violence and corruption were still prominently featured, but The Cold Six Thousand and American Tabloid aimed for a much broader scope; together they represented the author's expressed ambition to “re-create 20th-century American history through fiction.”

      Lee Earle Ellroy was born on March 4, 1948, in Los Angeles. His parents were divorced in 1954, and Ellroy moved with his mother to El Monte, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles. In 1958 his mother was murdered there, a crime that was never solved; in his autobiographical My Dark Places (1996), Ellroy wrote about the crime and its effect on his life. After his mother's death Ellroy lived with his father. He attended high school in Fairfax, a predominantly Jewish section of Los Angeles, but was expelled before graduation for “ranting about Nazism” in his English class. He then enlisted in the army but soon decided that he did not belong there and convinced an army psychiatrist that he was not mentally fit for combat. After three months he received a dishonourable discharge. Soon afterward his father died, and after a brief stay with a friend of his father, Ellroy landed on the streets of Los Angeles. From the age of 18 he lived in parks and vacant apartments; he spent most of his time drinking, taking drugs, and reading crime novels. After being jailed for breaking into a vacant apartment, Ellroy got a job at a bookstore. Meanwhile, he had become addicted to Benzedrex, a sinus inhaler that he swallowed to gain a euphoric high. With his health deteriorating and fearing for his sanity, Ellroy joined Alcoholics Anonymous and found steady work as a golf caddy. At the age of 30 he wrote and sold his first novel, Brown's Requiem (1981).

      Most of Ellroy's books dealt with crime and corruption. Among the best known were four novels that constituted the “L.A. Quartet” series: Black Dahlia (1987); The Big Nowhere (1988); L.A. Confidential (1990), made into an acclaimed movie of the same title in 1997; and White Jazz (1992).

      After publishing White Jazz, Ellroy produced American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand. In 2001 Ellroy fans were happy to hear that a cable television miniseries, entitled James Ellroy's Los Angeles, was set to air in September 2002 and that a film adaptation of My Dark Places was also in the works.

David R. Calhoun

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