L.A. Confidential

MTI

Ellroy, J. 저자(글)

Grand Central Publishing · 1997년 09월 01일

책 소개

In the tradition of Raymond Chandler's crime fiction comes this story of three tortured souls in the 1950s LAPD: a clean-cut cop who lives shivering in the shadow of his dad, his colleague who busts movie stars for payoffs from a sleazy magazine; and a detective haunted by the sight of his mother's murder. Intensity mounts as the novel's various plots intertwine more and more tightly, yet the narrative never veers too far from its core theme of cops competing with crooks to see who can be more corrupt and violent.
James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential is film-noir crime fiction akin to Chinatown,Hollywood Babylon, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Jim Thompson. It's about threetortured souls in the 1950s L.A.P.D.: Ed Exley, the clean-cut cop who lives shivering in the shadow of hisdad, a legendary cop in the same department; Jack Vincennes, a cop who advises a Police Squad- like TV show and busts movie stars for payoffs from sleazy Hush-Hush magazine; and Bud White,a detective haunted by the sight of his dad murdering his mom.Ellroy himself was traumatized as a boy by his party-animal mother's murder. (See his memoir My Dark Places for the whole sordid story.)So it is clear that Bud is partly autobiographical. But Exley, whose shiny reputation conceals a dark secret,and Vincennes, who goes showbiz with a vengeance, reflect parts of Ellroy, too. L.A. Confidential holds enough plots for two or three books: the cops chase stolen gangland herointhrough a landscape littered with not-always-innocent corpses while succumbing to sexy sirens who havebeen surgically resculpted to resemble movie stars; a vile developer--based (unfairly) on Walt Disney-- schemes to make big bucks off Moochie Mouse; and the cops compete with the crooks to see who can bemore corrupt and violent. Ellroy's hardboiled prose is so compressed that some of his rat-a-tat paragraphsare hard to follow. You have to read with attention as intense as his--and that is very intense indeed. Buthe richly rewards the effort. He may not be as deep and literary as Chandler, but he belongs on the sametop-level shelf.
L.A. Confidential is epic "noir", a crime novel of astonishing detail and scope written by the bestselling author of The Black Dahlia. A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law. And three lawmen are caught in a deadly spiral, a nightmare that tests loyalty and courage, and offers no mercy, grants no survivors.

작가정보

저자(글) Ellroy, J.

기본정보

ISBN	9780446674249 ( 0446674249 )
발행(출시)일자	1997년 09월 01일
쪽수	512쪽
크기	134 * 203 * 35 mm / 399 g
총권수	1권
언어	영어