An L.A. Crime Memoir. By James Ellroy. Alfred A. Knopf. TRUE crime is a guilty pleasure for the serious reader. Elmore Leonard is great fun and properly acclaimed, but his books are safe and clearly make-believe.
True crime is it.
The color is black and blue, like a bad bruise. It has the faint whiff of an autopsy. It really happened and there are glossy pictures to prove it, along with coroners' reports that deal with ligatures and rigor mortis and stomach contents. True crime is to the crime novel as crack cocaine is to marijuana. The ultimate reading room would be a morgue.