L.A. Confidential
James Ellroy'sL.A. Confidentialis film-noir crime fiction akin toChinatown,Hollywood Babylon, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Jim Thompson. It's about three  tortured souls in the 1950s L.A.P.D.: Ed Exley, the clean-cut cop who lives shivering in the shadow of his  dad, a legendary cop in the same department; Jack Vincennes, a cop who advises aPolice Squad- like TV show and busts movie stars for payoffs from sleazyHush-Hushmagazine; and Bud White,  a detective haunted by the sight of his dad murdering his mom.Ellroy himself was traumatized as a boy by his party-animal mother's murder. (See his memoirMy Dark Placesfor the whole sordid story.)  So it is clear that Bud is partly autobiographical. But Exley, whose shiny reputation conceals a dark secret,  and Vincennes, who goes showbiz with a vengeance, reflect parts of Ellroy, too.L.A. Confidentialholds enough plots for two or three books: the cops chase stolen gangland heroin  through a landscape littered with not-always-innocent corpses while succumbing to sexy sirens who have  been surgically resculpted to resemble movie stars; a vile developer--based (unfairly) on Walt Disney-- schemes to make big bucks off Moochie Mouse; and the cops compete with the crooks to see who can be  more corrupt and violent. Ellroy's hardboiled prose is so compressed that some of his rat-a-tat paragraphs  are hard to follow. You have to read with attention as intense as his—and that is very intense indeed. But  he richly rewards the effort. He may not be as deep and literary as Chandler, but he belongs on the same  top-level shelf.