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L.A. Quartet #1-4
The L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia / The Big Nowhere / L.A. Confidential / White Jazz
Here in one volume is James Ellroy's first great body of work, an epic re-envisioning of postwar Los Angeles--etched in red and black and film-noir grays.
The Black Dahlia depicts the secret infrastructure of L.A.'s most sensational murder case. A young cop morphs into obsessed lover and lust-crazed avenger. The Dahlia claims him. She is the deus ex machina of a boomtown in extremis. The cop's rogue investigation is a one-way ticket to hell.
The Big Nowhere blends the crime novel and the political novel. It is winter, 1950--and the L.A. County Grand Jury is out to slam movieland Reds. It's a reverential shuck--and the three cops assigned to the job are out to grab all the glory they can. A series of brutal sex killings intervenes, and the job goes all-the-way bad.
L.A. Confidential is the great novel of Los Angeles in the 1950s. Political corruption. Scandal-rag journalism. Bad racial juju and gangland wars. Six local stiffs slaughtered in an all-night hash house. The glorious and overreaching LAPD on an unprecedented scale.
White Jazz gives us the tortured confession of a corrupt cop going down for the count. He's a slumlord, a killer, a parasitic exploiter. He's a pawn in a series of police power plays and starting to see that he's being had. He's just met a woman. Thus, he's determined to claw his way out of the horrifying world he's created--and he's determined to tell us everything.
The L.A. Quartet is a groundbreaking work of American popular fiction.
The Black Dahlia depicts the secret infrastructure of L.A.'s most sensational murder case. A young cop morphs into obsessed lover and lust-crazed avenger. The Dahlia claims him. She is the deus ex machina of a boomtown in extremis. The cop's rogue investigation is a one-way ticket to hell.
The Big Nowhere blends the crime novel and the political novel. It is winter, 1950--and the L.A. County Grand Jury is out to slam movieland Reds. It's a reverential shuck--and the three cops assigned to the job are out to grab all the glory they can. A series of brutal sex killings intervenes, and the job goes all-the-way bad.
L.A. Confidential is the great novel of Los Angeles in the 1950s. Political corruption. Scandal-rag journalism. Bad racial juju and gangland wars. Six local stiffs slaughtered in an all-night hash house. The glorious and overreaching LAPD on an unprecedented scale.
White Jazz gives us the tortured confession of a corrupt cop going down for the count. He's a slumlord, a killer, a parasitic exploiter. He's a pawn in a series of police power plays and starting to see that he's being had. He's just met a woman. Thus, he's determined to claw his way out of the horrifying world he's created--and he's determined to tell us everything.
The L.A. Quartet is a groundbreaking work of American popular fiction.
1416 pages, Hardcover
Published June 4, 2019
29 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
James Ellroy
189 books4,139 followersLee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
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November 19, 2021Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49MIi...
November 24, 2022
As viewed from a view at the top, this quartet is truly an achievement. I think there distinctions could also be viewed as two sets of duologies, as plenty of crossover occurs in both. As an alternate history reimagining and condemnation of the institutions erected for the corrupt and as bad as criminals, the Justice apparatus is as twisted, defunct, and disgusting as the too-graphic depravity that exists in all of the novels.
There are no heroes. Only less terrible protagonists, often plummeting into uncontrolled descents we can’t help but watch in awe of. We sometimes hope they don’t crash, but there’s no pulling up from these particular spins. Surviving the crash is beside the point, the trajectory and human error is what is predominantly on display, when viewing the books as a whole.
There’s no glossy Hollywoodization, though it is heavily stylized and dramatized. Rather, it’s about showing just how poorly humanity serves the best of humanity, and what it actually nurtures and feeds, despite propaganda we rear ourselves on. It also doesn’t have answers for the fix. New generations of cops emerge throughout, only to be co-opted into new eras of new stains.
It’s pointless to pretend we aren’t fascinated by the darkness and winding roads. But it is equally pointless to pretend like everything is okay when the destruction caused by the people we seed authority to is not actually Good, by any means.
In this particular edition I’ll note the introduction is not great, and even spoils White Fuzz a bit. There’s better articles on why these books are so well regarded. Mostly, it’s just a small summation of what occurs and the subject matter, aside from the major spoiler, self admitted in the text. The Chronology is interesting and the formatting is nice and clean, though the type is somewhat small. It’s a nice edition and, for me, was the most cost effective way to get them all, anyway.
As to the audiobooks I’ve tried of these, no narrator really nails the prose style and dialogue from large casts. It’d be a huge task and with 3-4 different narrators, none of them were better than how it reads on the page.
There are no heroes. Only less terrible protagonists, often plummeting into uncontrolled descents we can’t help but watch in awe of. We sometimes hope they don’t crash, but there’s no pulling up from these particular spins. Surviving the crash is beside the point, the trajectory and human error is what is predominantly on display, when viewing the books as a whole.
There’s no glossy Hollywoodization, though it is heavily stylized and dramatized. Rather, it’s about showing just how poorly humanity serves the best of humanity, and what it actually nurtures and feeds, despite propaganda we rear ourselves on. It also doesn’t have answers for the fix. New generations of cops emerge throughout, only to be co-opted into new eras of new stains.
It’s pointless to pretend we aren’t fascinated by the darkness and winding roads. But it is equally pointless to pretend like everything is okay when the destruction caused by the people we seed authority to is not actually Good, by any means.
In this particular edition I’ll note the introduction is not great, and even spoils White Fuzz a bit. There’s better articles on why these books are so well regarded. Mostly, it’s just a small summation of what occurs and the subject matter, aside from the major spoiler, self admitted in the text. The Chronology is interesting and the formatting is nice and clean, though the type is somewhat small. It’s a nice edition and, for me, was the most cost effective way to get them all, anyway.
As to the audiobooks I’ve tried of these, no narrator really nails the prose style and dialogue from large casts. It’d be a huge task and with 3-4 different narrators, none of them were better than how it reads on the page.
July 25, 2021
Very challenging book. 1300 pages full of outdated slang, entangled plot, myriad of characters with a lot of gore, violence and slurs. Worth reading multiple times, not only to enjoy the style, but also to understand plot and characters better.
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December 15, 2024DNF. Black Dahlia is one of the best novels of its century, will revisit the other three at a later date.
April 8, 2019
Ellroy's Los Angeles is equivalent to Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County.
February 23, 2021
A lovely wallow in noir.
November 5, 2024
I hold the unpopular opinion that Ellroy's fiction is not at all good while his non-fiction is alright. Also, I disagree immensely with the reasons others give for not liking his fiction or his writing and his famous quartet is a perfect reference point.
His male leads are quite literally interchangeable. For pretty much every story he writes, novel and short fiction alike. The difference between Dick Contino (Hollywood Nocturnes), Jack Vincennes and Bud White (L.A. Confidential), Dave Klein (White Jazz) and Pete Bondurant (American Tabloid) are virtually non-existent. They are the same person with different names and marginally different personality and character traits and one of only three archetypical main male character types. The "haunted cop/ex-cop/enforcer/accordionist", the "completely capable independent man that buys it for absolutely no reason" (i.e. Danny Upshaw (The Big Nowhere), Kemper Boyd (American Tabloid)) and the "wormy, spineless, bespectacled politically minded wimp that win everything" (i.e. Edmund Exley (L.A. Confidential), Ward Littell (American Tabloid)). These archetypical differences aside, within their archetypes they all talk the same way, move the same way and act the same way, with very little discernable differences. The only somewhat notable difference, is their ultimate goal which is, nine times out of ten, redemption via a woman, so what is the difference really? It should also be stated that Ellroy's female characters vacillate between one of only two different strains; foul mouthed cotton candy or smeared lipstick with a pulse with little room for much else, regardless of age, profession or greater purpose to the story.
I disagree that his stories are densely plotted, so much so that it renders them almost impossible to understand. His stories really are incredibly simple. It is the entirely unnecessary and thoroughly unentertaining diatribes he takes the characters on and dwells on for pages and pages and pages that can make the reader feel lost at times. It's exhausting and does not serve the story nor the characters at all.
Case in point, early on in The Black Dahlia, there is a reference made during a police briefing about a series of dead cats that have been being discarded in a public park. It's very quick, only a single sentence, and Ellroy does his level best for you to barely notice it, or better yet, completely forget about it until it's paid off in the fifty or so pages. Leaving the astute reader to go, "Huh...I wonder how that's going to pay off," for what is the majority of the novel to no ultimately fantastic or interesting end.
If there had to be a best novel selected from the The L.A. Quartet it would probably have to be White Jazz. It's also, probably, Ellroy's best novel overall, but that's not really saying much. His work will leave you "steamed, reamed and dry cleaned" but not in a way that I can feel was worth it to endure. More like a mandatory long-haul road trip, or moving your entire house in a single night.
His male leads are quite literally interchangeable. For pretty much every story he writes, novel and short fiction alike. The difference between Dick Contino (Hollywood Nocturnes), Jack Vincennes and Bud White (L.A. Confidential), Dave Klein (White Jazz) and Pete Bondurant (American Tabloid) are virtually non-existent. They are the same person with different names and marginally different personality and character traits and one of only three archetypical main male character types. The "haunted cop/ex-cop/enforcer/accordionist", the "completely capable independent man that buys it for absolutely no reason" (i.e. Danny Upshaw (The Big Nowhere), Kemper Boyd (American Tabloid)) and the "wormy, spineless, bespectacled politically minded wimp that win everything" (i.e. Edmund Exley (L.A. Confidential), Ward Littell (American Tabloid)). These archetypical differences aside, within their archetypes they all talk the same way, move the same way and act the same way, with very little discernable differences. The only somewhat notable difference, is their ultimate goal which is, nine times out of ten, redemption via a woman, so what is the difference really? It should also be stated that Ellroy's female characters vacillate between one of only two different strains; foul mouthed cotton candy or smeared lipstick with a pulse with little room for much else, regardless of age, profession or greater purpose to the story.
I disagree that his stories are densely plotted, so much so that it renders them almost impossible to understand. His stories really are incredibly simple. It is the entirely unnecessary and thoroughly unentertaining diatribes he takes the characters on and dwells on for pages and pages and pages that can make the reader feel lost at times. It's exhausting and does not serve the story nor the characters at all.
Case in point, early on in The Black Dahlia, there is a reference made during a police briefing about a series of dead cats that have been being discarded in a public park. It's very quick, only a single sentence, and Ellroy does his level best for you to barely notice it, or better yet, completely forget about it until it's paid off in the fifty or so pages. Leaving the astute reader to go, "Huh...I wonder how that's going to pay off," for what is the majority of the novel to no ultimately fantastic or interesting end.
If there had to be a best novel selected from the The L.A. Quartet it would probably have to be White Jazz. It's also, probably, Ellroy's best novel overall, but that's not really saying much. His work will leave you "steamed, reamed and dry cleaned" but not in a way that I can feel was worth it to endure. More like a mandatory long-haul road trip, or moving your entire house in a single night.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 9, 2025
Stunning quartet of crime novels, not diminished in the slightest by having seen the movies of two of them.
The choppy, sparse style almost reminiscent of Hammett or James Cain makes the '50s milieu come alive and the characters, often tragic, often broken and flawed, carry the weight of the intricate plots admirably.
I'm only sorry I waited so long to get round to these. L.A. Confidential in particular was an eye opener given how much the movie was changed from the scope of the book. The characters in the book felt much more real to me, although less likeable in a way. You can see why they made the decisions they did for the movie but it would be interesting to see an accurate portrayal of the book.
Having characters recur through the books also helps to tie the stories, and the writer's themes together and all in all it's a tour-de-force, up there with the best crime writing of the last century.
Off now to catch up on the rest of his catalogue...
The choppy, sparse style almost reminiscent of Hammett or James Cain makes the '50s milieu come alive and the characters, often tragic, often broken and flawed, carry the weight of the intricate plots admirably.
I'm only sorry I waited so long to get round to these. L.A. Confidential in particular was an eye opener given how much the movie was changed from the scope of the book. The characters in the book felt much more real to me, although less likeable in a way. You can see why they made the decisions they did for the movie but it would be interesting to see an accurate portrayal of the book.
Having characters recur through the books also helps to tie the stories, and the writer's themes together and all in all it's a tour-de-force, up there with the best crime writing of the last century.
Off now to catch up on the rest of his catalogue...
September 28, 2024
This had been my quarantine project, the LA Quartet by James Ellroy. 1600 pages of killings, beatings, bribes, payoffs, shakedowns, trashed vows, and broken oaths. The series follows an intricate web of characters real and fictional in the Los Angeles police department from 1947-1958. This is a brutal series that is not for the weak of heart but if you have the guts to get through it, the novels are immensely satisfying and will keep you guessing to the last pages. You heard it first, off the record, on the QT, very hush-hush.
March 9, 2023
Very good but a painstaking read due to stylistic and linguistic aka slang. You get onto it but it takes awhile each time you pick it up. The upside is an intimate relationship with the main characters and a very clear picture of the life and times. Expect to take six months off and on reading this challenging crime tomb. Also pretty violent and graphic so not for the faint of heart. If you invest time in it you wont regret it.
December 12, 2023
In my opinion, the first two books are the high water mark in Ellroy's speculative fiction about modern American history - these two are centered around the Kennedy & MLK assassinations. They are both quite brutal. The Cold Six Thousand is worth a read just for the writing style - the "punchiest" book I've ever read.
October 3, 2019
Best of the genre, hands down.
March 26, 2022
The best series of books I’ve ever read.
Four tales of classic LA Noir.
Brutal stories written by a brilliant author.
Just read it…
Four tales of classic LA Noir.
Brutal stories written by a brilliant author.
Just read it…
March 11, 2025
read this
December 12, 2019
Brilliant. A game changer.
September 25, 2020
Today's L.A. decadance holds its more simplifid or more "splendid" expressional form of their "own" colony than that of the time of Marlow's. There, the detective-author is also a man of the childish nature, but he cannot help moving other than within the so primitive framework of the "given" contemporary culturally colonialized L.A. That is his poesie about their sweet misery of their L.A. Who could ignore such one's poesie?
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