L.A. Confidential Paperback – September 1, 1997

This is the first novel I’ve read by James Ellroy. As a writer, I try to write, spare, lean prose. Avoid adverbs and adjectives. It’s humbling to read Ellroy. His writing is so lean, sometimes he doesn’t even use verbs.The story is set in LA in the ‘50s and was published in 1990. It is refreshingly unwoke (sorry for that adverb). I don’t imagine it could get published today, which is sad.It’s a great story. Complicated and layered and packed with well-drawn characters. I had seen the movie years ago with Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, and Kevin Spacey. I watched it again when I was about a third of the way through the book. Kudos to the screenwriters who did an excellent job of condensing an epic, sprawling novel into a great film. But Ellroy’s story is far more complicated and complex than the film.I read the book over several weeks, and to do the story justice I should have read it more quickly because it covers a decade and there are subplots on top of subplots. I am tempted to read it again. But I think I’ll try another one of his classics.Highly recommended.

Ellroy really, really knows how to write. He hooks you on the first page and doesn't let go.He has basically reinvented the noir novel, both modernizing it in terms of how gritty, violent and dark it can be, while maintaining absolute fidelity to the slang of the genre - not to mention the profoundly "un-woke" attitudes of the time. His characters are violent, tortured, noble, depraved, weak, macho, honest, sinister - often all at the same time. Everyone's on the make. Everyone is playing someone else in a scene. And each chapter does very much feel like a "scene" right out of a movie, which is very appropriate for this particular book.If you're an Angeleno, you're going to love reading how a detective tails a suspect all over town, "up Highland to Fountain, out to Silverlake..." etc. Being LA characters, they do a lot of driving. Get ready to look up specific historic locales he mentions.So far, I've read his "LA Quartet" in order, and liked "The Black Dahlia" the best, perhaps because it was newest to me. But this one is very strong, very entertaining, very hard to put down. You can almost see Ellroy reveling in the number of sub-plots he can create and weave through the book. But to some degree this burdens the overall story, when he tries to cram too many sub-plots into the main narrative and wrap them up all too neatly in the end. It makes for a slighty too-long book, but it's an extremely entertaining one.

Jame's Ellroy's "LA Confidential" is a remarkable book. Most people know of it only by it's excellent film adaptation. On it's own, it is an incredibly complex, brutal, and utterly facinating look into the LAPD of the 1950's.The book covers three main characters, as most of Ellroy's work does: Officer Wendell "Bud" White", a strongarm cop with a dark past that he uses to fuel his work; Sergent Jack Vincennes, a narc cop who is in love with his Hollywood connections and hides secrets of his own, trying to bury them as the crusading "Big V", and Sergent Edmund J. Exley, a war hero with a celebrated cop family who is driven by his sense of justice and the desire to live up to his father's expectations.These three occupy the larger canvas of LA in the 50's. The story starts with background on the three and the situation in LA, and moves on to the Nite Owl murders, a brutal slaying of innocents who's solution will eventually drive these men to first work against each other, and then together as the story becomes more entagled in the seedy LA underworld. Each man is noble on a basic level, but has past demons that occasionally threaten to drag them down. The story in wrentching, as are all of Ellroy's "LA Quartet" novel, and fits in nicely with the previous novel "The Big Nowhere", and the next bok "White Jazz".In "LA Confidential" Ellroy never lets up for a moment. The action is driven along by his breakneck writing style, and his staccato style shows it's first signs in the head of Jack Vincennes. The book is a marriage of tight plotting, facinating characters, and the dark background of LA. It is a triumph for James Ellroy.

The book fallows the LA story laid out in the first two book. A must read if you are a fan.

El tercer libro de la colección y lo compré en super oferta, solo $99

I enjoyed the film and I decided to take a look at original book,I can say not smooth like the film,the story in many parts is different from the storyline of the film. But enjoyable if you like a crime novel.

Great novel, far more to it than the film.

A great book, great storyteller.

Got this gift for my son and he enjoyed it.