Ellroy, James

First Amereican Edition (stated), first printing. A presentation copy very boldly SIGNED and INSCRIBED in blue and metallic-silver pen on the title page by the author : "Now back - OJ Drop dead ! James Ellroy". Publisher's black paper covered boards with quarter black cloth, silver blocked lettering to spine and author's monogram to front board in silver block. Clear, removable, archival protective sleeve fitted to dust-jacket. Octavo. pp. [12], 354. The author's tenth novel. Now considered a late-modern noir classic. The concluding novel in his so-called "LA Quartet" which includes "The Black Dahlia", "The Big Nowhere", and "LA Confidential". "Our best living mystery writer. Literate, suspenseful, honest. His pages crackle with manic energy. Ellroy captures the vocabulary, the rituals, the smells, rhythms, and colours of real people living on the edge. Nobody since Chandler has evoked so perfectly the seamy side of LA" (Austin Chronicle). The defining event in James Ellroy's life was his young mother's murder when he was ten years old. Like Elizabeth Short, the "Black Dahlia", she was ritualistically murdered, and Ellroy has basically been writing about his mother's unsolved murder in one way or another since then, including his memoir about her, "My Dark Places". While his work is clearly influenced by Raymond Chandler, it is tiresome to be reminded of it, and it must also be said that his work is ultimately the exact opposite of Chandler's relentless misogyny, a profound hatred of women that has marred what is otherwise a great body of work. Ellroy loves women very much (and is a loveable writer for that reason), as incarnated by his mother, and realised in the female character/victims he has written about with such grace, nobility, and beauty.