While James Ellroy maps LA's secret history, Crais charts today's media-manipulable law and venal Hollywood. It's more ethnically diverse now, there are places which are purely Chinese, Vietnamese, Lithuanian. But it always has been a feeding ground where people from all over the world come, hungry to reach their dreams. And any time you have so many people risking so much, there's a potential for crisis, and crime. Not everybody wins the race.
People search for an identity here, and often they fail, and feel rootless, desperate.
All of this in a place which physically, by its nature, moves. Here, you cannot even trust the ground beneath your feet. That story came from the death of my father, and wrestling with how to help my mother. Writing it allowed me to work through my fears, frustrations and desires. I wanted control over the situation.