Showing results by author "James Ellroy" in All Categories

Nobody plays accordion like Dick Contino. His skilled fingers can find beauty in even the schmaltziest Borscht Belt favorites, and with his matinee-idol looks he could be a real star. Right now, though, he’s slumming it as the headliner in a Grade Z teenybopper picture called Daddy-O. He’s too good for this movie, and finishing it is going to take him to a very dark place. Daddy-O and Dick Contino are both real, their stories dredged out of the past by James Ellroy, a master of historical crime fiction. In Dick Contino's Blues he takes us to B-List Hollywood in 1957 - a time when movies were cheerful and dirty secrets lurked just off camera.

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination - in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC....

From the Demon Dog of American literature comes James Ellroy’s Hollywood Death Trip. Dig into a quintet of highly stylized true crime that delves into some of the most notorious, unsolved, midcentury-Hollywood murders. Ellroy’s wicked baritone draws listeners into a series of hellacious crimes; beginning with the heartbreaking and gruesome murder of his own mother. Next, it’s the Karen Kupcinet Killing - her body, found strangled just days after JFK’s assassination. Beautiful Stephanie Gorman, a debutante killed by a stranger, made Los Angeles lock its doors at night. The series concludes with the salacious snuff of actor Sal Mineo, whose death is a fitting epigraph for a series set in “Hollyweird”.

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns: it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer, a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.

15 de enero de 1947. Los Ángeles, un solar desocupado. El cadáver de una mujer de veinticinco años, desnudo y seccionado en dos partes. El médico forense determina que ha sido torturada durante días mientras ella seguía consciente. Un periodista bautiza a la víctima como "la Dalia Negra".

In Los Angeles, in 1953, six innocent people are gunned down at an all-night diner. Three policemen arrive to investigate: Ed Exley, goaded by his father's success on the force and burning to eclipse him; Bud White, witness to his mother's murder, a time bomb with a badge; and Jack Vincennes, a former addict, a shake-down artist who works celebrities. Worse yet, these three see themselves as rivals. Their rage mirrors that of the killers they seek, and all are players in a game without rules or survivors.

It's 1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age - an age that will last until the 1,000 days of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Peter Bondurant, Howard Hughes’ right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa’s hit man. Kemper Boyd, employed by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell, a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy’s drive against organised crime.

Los Ángeles, Nochevieja de 1949. El cadáver mutilado de un hombre joven, los ojos arrancados, mordeduras por todo el cuerpo...es el primer asesinato de la oleada que sembrará el pánico en los entornos comunistas de la ciudad. Danny Upshaw, ayudante del sheriff, se obsesiona con el caso mientras se convierte en anzuelo contra los comunistas en Hollywood. Se sumarán a la caza de brujas Mal Considine, ambicioso teniente de la fiscalía del distrito, y Buzz Meeks, expolicía caído en desgracia.

Dallas, November 2, 1963. Wayne Tedrow, Jr., has arrived to kill a man. The fee is $6,000. He finds himself instead in the middle of a cover-up following JFK’s assassination. There follows a hellish five-year ride through the sordid underbelly of public policy via Las Vegas, Howard Hughes, Vietnam, CIA dope dealing, Cuba, sleazy showbiz, racism and the Klan. This is the 1960s under Ellroy’s blistering lens, the icons of the era mingled with cops, killers, hoods and provocateurs.

Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boomtown at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein: in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect, a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, 'a bad cop to draw the heat', and the heat's coming from all sides.

Los Ángeles, años cincuenta. Camuflada tras sus fabulosas mansiones y el glamour de los clubs nocturnos, la ciudad es un hervidero de corrupción y bajas pasiones. Una noche, una matanza baña en sangre una cafetería de la ciudad. Se trata de una auténtica carnicería, y sus oscuras ramificaciones atraparán a tres policías en sus arenas movedizas. Eclipsado por el éxito de su padre como policía, Ed Exley hará lo que sea para superarle y conseguir la gloria. Bud White, por su parte, vio cómo su progenitor asesinaba a su madre y es una bomba de relojería con placa y pistola.

It’s 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are dead. The Mob, Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover are in a struggle for America’s soul, drawing into their murderous conspiracies the damned and the soon-to-be damned. Wayne Tedrow Jr: assassin, dope cooker, mouthpiece for all sides, loyal to none. Dwight Holly: Hoover’s enforcer and hellish conspirator in terrible crimes.

The legendary crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir - as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels - about his obsessive search for “atonement in women". The year was 1958. Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name. Her son, James, was 10 years old. He hated and lusted after his mother and “summoned her dead". She was murdered three months later. The Hilliker Curse is a predator’s confession, a treatise on guilt and on the power of malediction, and above all, a cri de cœur.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

January '42. LA reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops tag it as a routine dead-man job. They’re wrong. It’s an early warning signal of chaos. There’s a murderous fire and a gold heist. There’s Fifth Column treason on American soil. There are homegrown Nazis, commies and race racketeers. There’s two dead cops in a dive off the jazz-club strip. And three men and one woman have a hot date with history.

Freddy is an ex-LA cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood—and it got to him bad. Now he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp—and, most notably, the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. Welcome to the world of the malevolent monarch of the Hollywood underground—a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films and strange bedfellows. In Widespread Panic, we traverse the depths of '50s LA and dig on the inner workings of Confidential.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

Los Angeles, veille de Pearl Harbour : la découverte des cadavres d'une famille d'origine japonaise, les Watanabe, incite le LAPD à fabriquer un coupable pour se débarrasser du problème. Dudley Smith, l'inoubliable "méchant" du quatuor de Los Angeles, est sur l'affaire. Une affaire qui s'annonce lucrative, tant l'hystérie du climat de guerre se prête aux machinations au détriment des citoyens américains d'origine japonaise.

Los Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker's looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O. Tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim "Opportunity is Love." Freddy gets to work.

Los Angeles, 4 août 1962. La ville subit une vague de chaleur au milieu de l'été. Marilyn Monroe fait une overdose. Une starlette de série B est kidnappée. La police de Los Angeles, surmédiatisée, réagit de façon excessive. Le chef Bill Parker cherche à se venger. L'affaire Monroe a l'air de rapporter gros. Il fait appel à Freddy Otash.