Detailed item info | Size | | Length: | 351 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in. | | Width: | 7.0 in. | | Thickness: | 1.5 in. | | Weight: | 26.4 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | In 1958, when James Ellroy was 10 years old, his mothers body was found in a run-down town near Los Angeles. The murderer was never found; the case remains unsolved. This remarkable book--part unflinching autobiography, part vivid reportage--tells an extraordinarily gripping story about the failed murder investigation, uncovering Ellroy's daring, revelatory journey into and through his most forbidding memories. 14 photos.
Jean Ellroy was murdered in 1958. Her body was dumped on a roadway in a run-down L.A. suburb. The killer was never found. The case was closed. It was a sordid back-page homicide that nobody remembered. Except her son. James Ellroy was ten years old when his mother died. His bereavement was complex and ambiguous. He grew up obsessed with murdered women and crime. His life spun hellishly out of control. He ran from the ghost of Jean Ellroy. He became a writer of radically provocative and best-selling crime novels. He tried to reclaim his mother through fiction. It didn't work. He quit running and wrote this memoir. My Dark Places is Jean Ellroy's and James Ellroy's story - from 1958 to all points past and up to this moment. It is the story of a brilliant homicide detective named Bill Stoner, and of the investigation he and James Ellroy undertook to find Jean Ellroy's killer. My Dark Places is unflinching autobiography and vivid reportage. It is no less than a treatise on 38 years of American murder. It is James Ellroy's journey into and through his most forbidding memories.
| | Industry reviews | "...[T]here are long portions of 'My Dark Places' that will remind Mr. Ellroy's readers of his novels....Because Mr. Ellroy recounts all the dead ends, all the wild goose chases, all the tips that failed to pan out, his narrative sometimes feels frustratingly elliptical and static. In taking us through their work, step by step, however, he also conveys to us the painstaking nature of police work and the grueling emotions he experienced as his mother's would-be avenger."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (11/06/1996)
"Although, without doubt, Ellroy would have liked to have nailed his mother's killer, what he craved, beyond justice, was catharsis."
Literary Review - Philip Oakes (11/19/1996)
"Well known for genre-mixing and -bending, Ellroy here makes his biggest leap yet: a true-crime detective story, an L.A. social history and a kind of romance. The result of a twisted literary memoir, the white-hot spinning of a loner and autodidact."
Nation - Emily Gordon (12/02/1996)
"'My Dark Places' is an important book for the genre because, like most valuable crime books, it transcends the genre. It speaks of bleak tragedy and a search for a lost boy and his equally lost mother far more than it solves a mystery."
Washington Post Book World - Ann Rule (11/24/1996)
|
|
Portions of this page Copyright 1995 - 2009 Muze Inc.  All rights reserved. |
Back to home page
) 
Coles House of Collectibles
Print
Report item
and your 