Amazon.com Review
You wouldn't expect slick GQ to perform the greatest magazine service to hard-boiled crime writing since the heyday of Black Mask, but the evidence is before your eyes: Crime Wave, James Ellroy's collected GQ works circa 1993-99.
Though Crime Wave contains two stories in the exhilaratingly sleazy voice of the fictitious scandal rag Hush-Hush, and the novella-length "Hollywood Shakedown," a tale of sex, drugs, and murder starring '50s crooner-accordionist Dick Contino, the book is predominantly nonfiction. There's one flavorful piece, "Bad Boys in Tinseltown," about the day in 1967 when Ellroy--then a speed freak who broke into fancy houses to steal stuff and sniff women's underwear--read an article by Curtis Hanson raving about Bonnie and Clyde and was inspired. Then Ellroy flashes forward to 1996, when he visits Hanson as he directs the triumphant film version of L.A. Confidential.
GQ talked Ellroy into writing about the event that made him a maniac, and then an obsessive writer: his dissolute mother's unsolved murder in 1958, when he was 10. His investigation of her death began with the chilling GQ article "My Mother's Killer," which grew into the book My Dark Places. (If you haven't heard Ellroy read it on audiotape, you haven't shivered.) His investigation of another woman's murder, "Body Dumps," is in some ways better, because there's a suspect to eviscerate in prose. "Sex, Glitz, and Greed," written about O.J. during the trial, is an odd fit in this collection, but when Ellroy is on his own turf--L.A.'s seamy, undead past--nobody can touch him. --Tim Appelo
From Publishers Weekly
Ellroy's obsessionsATinseltown tabloid sleaze and his mother's murderAhave fueled his writing and provided readers with countless indelible images, reams of trademark stuttergun prose and at least two killer books, L.A. Confidential and My Dark Places. This collection of 11 pieces of fiction and reportage, all previously published in GQ magazine, isn't essential Ellroy, but newcomers contemplating a tentative first dip might find it a fine place to start. The powerfully frank "My Mother's Killer" evolved into My Dark Places, and "Body Dumps" and "Glamour Jungle" both explore LAPD investigations into crimes similar to the death of Ellroy's mother in 1958, when he was 10. Two tales feature the investigative reporting of Hush-Hush magazine, always dedicated to digging the dirt and awesomely addicted to alliteration. Real-life accordionist Dick Contino has several capers of his own and gets to ingest illegal drugs, whack a few lowlifes and hang with Sammy Davis Jr. Ellroy also tackles O.J. Simpson's case, his own high school reunion and the making of the film L.A. Confidential. For some reason, his editor at GQ balked at letting the "Demon Dog of American Literature" loose on Bill and Monica. We surely missed out on a whole sackful of sleazy stuff there. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.