"One of the strengths of this true-crime anthology series comes simply from its astonishing variety . . . it would be tough to better this collection." — BooklistThe 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including Peter Landesman's article about female sex slaves (the most requested and widely read New York Times story of 2004), a piece from ...

Following his remarkable fiction debut, Rope Burns, author F. X. Toole's Pound for Pound is a big, brawny novel of honor, perseverance, family, and forgiveness, set in towns where violence is the norm and success stories take on an almost mythic importance. It is the story of Dan Cooley, an aging, legendary Los Angeles trainer, who takes on Chicky Garza, a troubled young fighter hungry for glory in the notoriously corrupt San Antonio boxing circuit. Written in the masterf...

A remarkable portrait of "true L.A. noir" with archival photos from the Los Angeles Police Museum and text by legendary crime writer James Ellroy ( Los Angeles Times).James Ellroy, the undisputed master of crime writing, has teamed up with the Los Angeles Police Museum to present a stunning text on 1953 L.A. While combing the museum's photo archives, Ellroy discovered that the year featured a wide array of stark and unusual imagery—and to accompany the pic...

James Ellroy's deep dive into the psyche of a serial killer who recounts his life in the shadows, a tale of American madness and obsession."The scariest book I've ever read." —Jason KellermanEven as a child, Martin Michael Plunkett was no ordinary boy. Extreme parental indifference marked him as an outcast. In his head, Plunkett crafted a second life, remaking himself in the guise of his favorite comic book villain. His mind fixated on dark thought...

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Murder, mayhem and dirty cops on the make against the backdrop of anti-communist hysteria in L.A. in 1950.It’s Los Angeles in the new year of 1950. The Communist Scare is heating up. Gangsters vie for control of the town. The Hollywood studios are feuding with the unions. Then a dead body with its eyes gouged out turns up.The investigating officer, Sheriff’s deputy Danny Upshaw, is obsessed with the murder case that no one else ...

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia.Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer—a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.Klein's been hung o...

**From bestselling, award-winning author James Ellroy, "the neo-noir eminence of L.A. crime fiction" (The New Yorker)—a gritty, fast-paced historical crime thriller set in 1962 Los Angeles during the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis"The Freddy Otash novels will be mentioned . . . as some of Ellroy's best work.” —NPR**It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney G...

Three detectives descend into the underbelly of Los Angeles, where all the classic elements of an Ellroy novel—police corruption, Hollywood scandal, and organized crime—collide in this bestselling installment in the L.A. Quartet.Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals.Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. Three LAPD detectives get involved. Ed Exley wants to eclipse his poli...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERAN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEARIt is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans—but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins.The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angel...

CHOSEN BY TIME MAGAZINE AS ONE OFTHE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR"ONE HELLISHLY EXCITING RIDE."--Detroit Free PressThe '50s are finished. Zealous young senator Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office. J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new communist nation."HARD-BITTEN. . . ...

Beneath the slick, glittering surface of L.A., an underworld of depravity and wickedness reins. Fritz Brown is a part-time private eye and full-time repo-man who gets his kicks listening to classical music. But the waters get too deep for Brown when he takes a case from a cash-flashing golf caddy named Freddy “Fat Dog” Baker that puts him on the trail of his client’s sister and the older gentleman she’s run off with. But more suspicious than his sister, a classy cellist, is Fat Dog himself...

A botched liquor store heist leaves three grisly dead. A hero cop is missing. Nobody could see a pattern in these two stray bits of information–no one except Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, a brilliant and disturbed L.A. cop with an obsessive desire to protect the innocent. To him they lead to one horrifying conclusion--a killer is on the loose and preying on his city. From the master of L.A. noir comes this beautiful and brutal tale of a cop and a criminal squared off in a life and deat...