Destination: Morgue! - James Ellroy

[Bern]

A collection of short pieces for GQ magazine (some autobiographical, others non-fiction crime reportage) and a bloody triptych that makes up the novella Rick Loves Donna.

These 3 stories, of intense punctuations spaced over decades, read like an Ellroy fantasy - old school LAPD cop with the ultimate Hollywood leading lady, one whose method acting of a Los Angeles policewoman gives her a taste for something that's rarely sated.

I also liked the piece on boxing that opens the collection.

[Jane B]

I love James Ellroy and his no holes barred bare bones style. If you haven't read it try American Tabloid an entertaining look at history from the bottom up full of renegade government agencies, mobsters, industrial tycoons and Hollywood players fueling the rise and fall of the Kennedy administration. Ellroy makes his version of history so convincing you could almost imagine that it actually happened that way.

[Bern]

"no holds barred" - altho your version is more Ellroy-esque ; )

[Ashleigh Veitch]

Is James Ellroy the author whose mum was murdered when he was little? Maybe this had some influence on his style of writing and subject matter!

[Bern]

No doubt. You can read how he reopened the file on his mother's murder and worked the case with an ex-LAPD cop (unsuccessfully). In the Ellroy world, how much comes from experience? What is just imagined? Makes for an interesting sideline when reading the books. Seems he'd have sources in all sorts of places.

[Bern]

P.S. here's a recent article from Rolling Stone - James Ellroy's American Apocalypse - The master of modern noir has completed an epic secret history of America - a trilogy so dark that he lost his mind writing it ... good stuff!!