James Ellroy, "This Storm"

James Ellroy discusses his novel, "This Storm", at Politics and Prose on 6/7/19.

Ellroy, one of the top crime fiction writers working today, excels at telling large stories on an expansive canvas. He won renown first with his Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy–which included the classic American Tabloid—and cemented his reputation with his unparalleled L.A. Quartet. In his new novel, which follows Perfidia as the second volume of a projected four, Ellroy returns to Los Angeles. The time is 1942. The city is inflamed with war fever and racism, and many in the LAPD are less concerned with fighting crime than with profiteering, tracking down fifth column elements, or, when a body washes up in a mudslide, with claiming a share of the loot from an unsolved gold heist a decade earlier. Masterfully paced, richly plotted, and dripping with noir, this is historical crime fiction at its best—and vintage Ellroy.

JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover, and the L.A. Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L. A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He lives in Colorado.

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Produced by Tom Warren