james ellroy | james ellroy
Jul.10.2012
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Regret is a pair of glowing red eyes that stare down at you from the corners as you fitfully fall asleep.
Murder is the dark bile that flows through your veins.
Sudden loss is the demon spirit that pulls your heart from your chest and sets it...
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Feb.12.2011
The Cases that Haunt Us
One of my all-time favorite books, and definitely not for the squeamish. The authors cover--in unbelievably great detail and depth--the crimes, aftereffects, motives, evidence and suspects involved in the periphery of the Jack the Ripper killings in Whitechapel in 1888, the...
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Feb.11.2011
The Black Dahlia
Based on the infamous case of Elizabeth Short, who Ellroy later claimed to be his mother. Almost as brilliant as Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, and in some ways it's superior. The time, the pitch, the pace, the plot, the dialogue and characterization--all among The Mad Dog's...
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Feb.12.2010
I’ve been called the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine, the John Le Carre of the Middle East, the James Ellroy of…Palestine, the Graham Greene of Jerusalem, and the Georges Simenon of the Palestinian refugee camps. Depends which review you happen to have read.
I’ve published three previous novels about...
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Jan.08.2010
In the documentary “Imagine,” John Lennon comments that his song “Starting Over” was a message to fans his own age in which he aimed to ask them: “Hey, how’re you? Weren’t the Seventies a drag? Let’s hope the Eighties will be better.”
If John had lived on through the Eighties to experience the...
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Dec.04.2009
The Samaritan's Secret, the third of my Palestinian crime novels, was named one of the Best Mystery Books of the Year for 2009 by <a href="http://www.deadlypleasures.com/index.html">Deadly Pleasures</a>, the crime fiction magazine with the best read on websites and what fans...
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Sep.29.2009
Thomas Carlyle wrote that “A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.” There may be some debate as to whether Timothy Leary’s life was well-spent. However, his biography by John Higgs is one of the most well-written and compelling books you’ll ever come across. “I Have America...
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Aug.25.2009
Megan Abbott is the female James Ellroy. When I read her Edgar-award-winning “Queenpin,” I immediately was put in mind of everyone’s favorite noirmeister. Dig it. Even more I loved “The Song is You,” in which Abbott took a real-life missing persons case from 1949 and plumbed her Hollywood...
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Jun.24.2009
My second Palestinian crime novel A Grave in Gaza (UK title: The Saladin Murders) is just now published in Holland. The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant asked me to contribute a list of my five favorite books, or at least those which've had the biggest impact on me as a writer. Here's what I wrote:...
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Apr.09.2009
(Author’s note: Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life, is a collection of author interviews. It includes Pete Dexter, Alistair MacLeod, Daniel Woodrell, Elmore Leonard and James Crumley. Rogue Males also features an account of a trip to the desert to interview crime...
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