My Dark Places by James EllroyRead about the other entries on the list.
Best known for his L.A. Quartet novels — The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz — Ellroy’s own life is darker than any of his fiction. In 1958, the battered body of Jean Ellroy was found in a sleazy corner of Los Angeles; her son James was 10. For the next nearly four decades, James Ellroy tried to exorcise his mother’s ghost through writing fiction but her unsolved murder continued to haunt him. In 1994, he stopped running from the past and confronted it head on, hiring a retired LAPD detective to help him solve the biggest crime of his career. Reading this raw, searing memoir will only deepen the experience of Ellroy’s fictional oeuvre, giving readers an unflinching look at his life-long, and often unhealthy, obsession with sex crimes and police work. You should really call your mom after reading this and tell her that you love her.
My Dark Places is among Errol Morris's five top tales of true crime and Peter Collier's five best books about writers' lives.
--Marshal Zeringue
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