{"id":2675,"date":"2023-06-04T00:28:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-04T00:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/2023\/06\/04\/how-thieving-and-murder-led-to-a-fortune-writing-crime\/"},"modified":"2023-06-04T00:28:48","modified_gmt":"2023-06-04T00:28:48","slug":"how-thieving-and-murder-led-to-a-fortune-writing-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/how-thieving-and-murder-led-to-a-fortune-writing-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"How thieving and murder led to a fortune writing crime"},"content":{"rendered":"


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BIOGRAPHY\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

LOVE ME FIERCE IN DANGER: THE LIFE OF JAMES ELLROY\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

by Steven Powell<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(Bloomsbury Academic \u00a314.99, 288pp)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I am obsessed with violence,\u2019 James Ellroy once said in a TV interview. \u2018I am obsessed with twisted sexuality. I am obsessed with jealousy, greed, overweening ambition.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

These are excellent qualifications for a crime writer, and Ellroy has often been called America<\/a>\u2019s finest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steven Powell\u2019s brilliant, unflinching biography reveals how the novelist\u2019s obsessions have their roots in the extraordinary experiences of his childhood and early years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Even <\/div>\n

Even before his first novel was published, James Ellroy (pictured) was telling friends that he would be the greatest crime writer ever<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ellroy was born in Los Angeles<\/a> in 1948. His father, Armand, was business manager to Rita Hayworth. He later claimed to his son that he had slept with the famously glamorous film star.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ellroy\u2019s mother, more than 15 years younger than her husband, was a nurse. Both parents had complicated love lives behind and ahead of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They divorced in 1954 and their young son was shuttled back and forth between two homes. The defining event in Ellroy\u2019s early life took place when he was only ten years old. His mother was murdered. The crime remains unsolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The assumption is that the killer was the so-called \u2018Swarthy Man\u2019, who was seen drinking and dancing with her on the night she died, but he\u2019s never been identified.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ellroy\u2019s initial reaction to the news as a child was ambivalent. At the time he despised his mother and idolised his father. His first thought, he later admitted, was that he was glad his mother was dead. He was free to live all the time with his father.<\/p>\n

Living with Armand proved less than ideal. By the time he was in his teens, Ellroy was his father\u2019s carer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Armand suffered a series of strokes and died in 1965. His deathbed advice to his son, Ellroy later reported, was: \u2018Try to pick up every waitress who serves you.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Orphaned at 17, Ellroy was free to go off the rails in spectacular fashion. He had already been expelled from school, taken up shoplifting and embarked on a career as a peeping Tom and maker of obscene phone calls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now his life went rapidly downhill. He began to break into houses, mainly to steal women\u2019s underwear. He was homeless at times, sleeping in local\u00a0parks. He was often arrested, spending periods in jail. Drink and drugs brought on blackouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Ellroy <\/div>\n

Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His father, Armand, was business manager to Rita Hayworth<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

After one binge, he woke up in San Francisco, 380 miles from his home, naked in bed with a 300 lb woman and no idea how he got there. He had hallucinations in which monsters emerged from his toilet and \u2018spiders crawled up my legs\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What rescued him from self-destruction was his commitment to becoming a writer. He sobered up and put pen to paper. (Literally \u2014 he has never used a typewriter.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even before his first novel was published, he was telling friends that he would be the greatest crime writer ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His early books made little money. His first success came with The Black Dahlia, a story based on an infamous Los Angeles murder, which bore resemblances to his mother\u2019s killing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film version of LA Confidential, released in 1997, gave him a new level of fame. He called it \u2018the greatest thing that happened to me which I had nothing to do with\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Powell scrupulously chronicles Ellroy\u2019s hectic career: his compulsive womanising; lapses in sobriety; near nervous breakdowns; and attentiongrabbing performances as the selfstyled \u2018Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to his ex-wife, Helen Knode: \u2018James lives life like he was shot out of a cannon.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

This gripping, illuminating biography not only throws light on just what she meant by that. It also reveals why he does so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BIOGRAPHY\u00a0 LOVE ME FIERCE IN DANGER: THE LIFE OF JAMES ELLROY\u00a0 by Steven Powell\u00a0(Bloomsbury Academic \u00a314.99, 288pp)\u00a0 \u2018I am obsessed with violence,\u2019 James Ellroy once said in a TV interview. \u2018I am obsessed with twisted sexuality. I am obsessed with jealousy, greed, overweening ambition.\u2019\u00a0 These are excellent qualifications for a crime writer, and Ellroy has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1677],"tags":[1678,101,23,1520,486,2411,148,1280,5431,5432],"acf":{"source_article":"","image_credit":""},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}