White Jazz - Paperback

by James Ellroy (Author)

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia.

Front Jacket

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns--it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.
Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time.
Klein tells his own story--his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing--taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive.
Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.

Back Jacket

LOS ANGELES, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns -- it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer -- a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.

Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat", and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins -- all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead", it's dues time.

Klein tells his own story -- his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing -- taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive.

Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.

Author Biography

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz, and the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover. These seven novels have won numerous honors and were international best sellers. He is also the author of two collections, Crime Wave and Destination: Morgue! and two memoirs My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse. Ellroy currently lives in Denver, Colorado.