Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.
by James Ellroy
List Price:
Our Price: $3.30
You Save: $10.65 (76%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: James EllroyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-01-26
ISBN: 037570471X
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.
Book Review: This book'll show you some bad Juju, Jasper...
Summary: 5 Stars
Dig it dad: James Ellroy is at the top of the heap when it comes to writing crime fiction, because he's not afraid to look at the bottom of the barrel. CRIMEWAVE is another brutal look at Los Angeles in all of it's sordid glory in an era when there was a reason that foot patrolman were called beat cops. From the stark, icy descriptions of malevolent mayhem most of his readers will never see, to his diabolically derived detachment, the demon dog delivers a devastating package with every pulsating page...so put down the crack, jack and pick up your slacks. The demon dog wants to take you down to places that will leave you trembling with trepidation and delirious with desperation.
Summary of Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.
Los Angeles. In no other city do sex, celebrity, money, and crime exert such an irresistible magnetic field. And no writer has mapped that field with greater savagery and savvy than James Ellroy. With this fever-hot collection of reportage and short fiction, he returns to his native habitat and portrays it as a smog-shrouded netherworld where"every third person is a peeper, prowler, pederast, or pimp."From the scandal sheets of the 1950s to this morning's police blotter, Ellroy reopens true crimes and restores human dimensions to their victims. Sublimely, he resurrects the rag Hush-Hush magazine. And in a baroquely plotted novella of slaughter and corruption he enlists the forgotten luminaries of a lost Hollywood. Shocking, mesmerizing, and written in prose as wounding as an ice pick, Crime Wave is Ellroy at his best.
You wouldn't expect slick GQ to perform the greatest magazine service to hard-boiled crime writing since the heyday of Black Mask, but the evidence is before your eyes: Crime Wave, James Ellroy's collected GQ works circa 1993-99.
Though Crime Wave contains two stories in the exhilaratingly sleazy voice of the fictitious scandal rag Hush-Hush, and the novella-length "Hollywood Shakedown," a tale of sex, drugs, and murder starring '50s crooner-accordionist Dick Contino, the book is predominantly nonfiction. There's one flavorful piece, "Bad Boys in Tinseltown," about the day in 1967 when Ellroy--then a speed freak who broke into fancy houses to steal stuff and sniff women's underwear--read an article by Curtis Hanson raving about Bonnie and Clyde and was inspired. Then Ellroy flashes forward to 1996, when he visits Hanson as he directs the triumphant film version of L.A. Confidential.
GQ talked Ellroy into writing about the event that made him a maniac, and then an obsessive writer: his dissolute mother's unsolved murder in 1958, when he was 10. His investigation of her death began with the chilling GQ article "My Mother's Killer," which grew into the book My Dark Places. (If you haven't heard Ellroy read it on audiotape, you haven't shivered.) His investigation of another woman's murder, "Body Dumps," is in some ways better, because there's a suspect to eviscerate in prose. "Sex, Glitz, and Greed," written about O.J. during the trial, is an odd fit in this collection, but when Ellroy is on his own turf--L.A.'s seamy, undead past--nobody can touch him. --Tim Appelo
Murder & Mayhem Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Murder & Mayhem Books
The Soul of a Copby Paul Ragonese, Berry Stainback
St Martins Mass Market Paper; Published: 1992-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.90
Who Named the Knife: A True Story of Murder and Memoryby Linda Spalding
Anchor; Published: 2008-10-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.84
Price in other shops:
Murder, Inc.: The Story Of The Syndicateby Burton B. Turkus, Sid Feder
Da Capo Press; Published: 2003-07-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.14
Price in other shops:
Protecting Your Life, Home, and Property: A Cop Shows You Howby Robert L. Snow
Plenum Pr; Published: 1995-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.47
Price in other shops:
Victims: THE LDS CHURCH AND THE MARK HOFMANN CASEby Richard E. Turley
University of Illinois Press; Published: 1992-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.58
Price in other shops:
The Serpent's Toothby Christopher P. Andersen
Harpercollins; Published: 1987-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.01
Price in other shops:
American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corpsby Philip Weiss
Harper; Published: 2004-06-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.39
Price in other shops:
The Invention of Murderby Judith Flanders
Harper; Published: 2011; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.85
The Enforcer: Johnny "Pops" Papalia: A Life and Death in the MafiaHarperCollins Publishers; Paperback; Book
Best price: $159.82
Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Executionby James L. Swanson, Daniel Weinberg
William Morrow; Published: 2006-10-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.13
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Cold Six Thousandby James Ellroy
Vintage; Published: 2002-06-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.78
Price in other shops:
Killer on the Roadby James Ellroy
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 1999-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.48
Price in other shops:
Brown's Requiemby James Ellroy
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 1998-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.96
Price in other shops:
White Jazz: A Novelby James Ellroy
Vintage; Published: 2001-04-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.09
Price in other shops:
Clandestineby James Ellroy
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 1999-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.48
Price in other shops:
Blood on the Moonby James Ellroy
Vintage; Published: 2005-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.15
Price in other shops:
Destination: Morgue!: L.A. Talesby James Ellroy
Vintage; Published: 2004-09-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
My Dark Placesby James Ellroy
Vintage; Published: 1997-08-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.10
Price in other shops:
Hollywood Nocturnes (Vintage)by James Ellroy
Vintage; Published: 2007-06-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.25
Price in other shops:
The Big Nowhereby James Ellroy
Mysterious Press; Published: 1998-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops: