Weekend Buff
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
Sorry for the late edition this week. A busy week.
L.A. Confidential is James Ellroy’s third installment in the LA Quartet of books that starts with The Black Dahlia, then The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and finally White Jazz. These books are all fantastic. They explore corruption and crime in post-war Los Angeles while the LAPD investigates sensational murder cases.
L.A. Confidential is the most well-known of the bunch due to the popularity of the fantastic movie of the same name. Ellroy had nothing to do with the movie, he was left out of the mix, but the screenwriters stayed mostly true to the book.
The story revolves around a multiple homicide in the Night Owl coffee shop. Six seemingly random people are brutally murdered in what appears to be a robbery gone bad. While the massacre is the narrative, the story truly revolves around corruption and politics of the era. Ellroy masterfully weaves in real live characters such as gangsters Mickey Cohen and Johnny Stompanato, LAPD Chief William Parker, and movie star Lana Turner, with his well-crafted original characters
The book takes a dystopian look at the 1950’s LAPD, with cops routinely drunk on duty, brutally violent, scheming for power, and morally corrupt. The homicide investigation brings all of that out with the selfish motives and actions of the investigators and bosses on full display. Some cops see the case as a career maker, a chance for a good assignment, or another opportunity to bash heads. The LAPD bosses want the case solved for public relations purposes. They want is solved quickly, and they don’t care much about who takes the rap.
The book revolves around four major characters. Detective Bud White, a brutal goon, who targets domestic abusers to chase away the demons of his youth. Lt Edmund Exley, seemingly the pillar of professionalism and procedure, but really an overly ambitious rising star who sees the case as a career maker, and a way to further hide his cowardly actions in the Pacific in World War II. Detective Jack Vincennes is publicity hungry and wants to get back his narcotics assignment so he can continue to be front page news. Lieutenant Dudley Smith is an Irish immigrant who’s lilting brogue belies his truly evil and manipulative character. He is a political animal who has no moral code.
Ellroy weaves the four personalities in a masterful way, playing their inner desires off each other while they pursue the Night Owl murderers (or whomever they want to frame) for their own interests. Ellroy’s tale is a current of personalities and motives running through the most serious of cases. The fact that six people are dead has little meaning to the cops involved in the investigation. That is the skewed state of moral corruption in Ellroy’s tale. The victim’s families or personal lives make no appearance in the book.
While the movie keeps the story mostly true to form, Ellroy’s version is much more expansive in a way that can only be portrayed on paper. Characters that were eliminated from the book or consolidated for time are rich on the pages. Inner thoughts and motives are crisper and detailed.
As indicated in past reviews, Ellroy’s LA Quartet of books is a fascination transformation of literary style. Ellroy starts the series with the very verbose and descriptive writing in The Black Dahlia. By the time he writes White Jazz, he has become much more succinct and compact in his writing style, often leaving the reader to decipher what is occurring. It’s an interesting conversion to see happen through the four novels.
L.A. Confidential is on the shelf in many libraries or can be purchased on Amazon for 13 dollars, paperback or Kindle. You can also buy all four LA Quartet books together on Amazon for 25 bucks – a pretty good deal. Enjoy this look at seedy Los Angeles from a master of crime fiction. You will hope police corruption was never truly this bad, and be grateful for how far the profession has come since the era depicted in James Ellroy’s books.
Thanks for reading The Ops Desk. Stay Safe!