Bookhound: James Ellroy, end of an era

I walked into Waterstones two nights ago, and felt the Earth tilt on its axis.

The third and final part of James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy. Blood's A Rover.

The first book, American Tabloid, was published in 1995. It ran from 1958 to the Kennedy assassination, mixing fact and fiction, real and invented characters. A compelling and convincing portrayal of America's underbelly, with scorching prose and dialogue. I wore out two paperback copies, reading and re-reading it.

The second book, The Cold Six Thousand, was published in 2001. Just as as compelling, based mainly in Las Vegas with a clandestine foray into Vietnam, leading up to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

Now the third book is out. This brings to close a saga that has taken nearly fifteen years to bring together.

James Ellroy is easily the best crime writer alive. He re-introduced the noir genre, stripped down prose and raz0r-edge dialogue, mixing real and invented characters and incidents. LA Confidential is his most famous book, but the film captures only a fraction of the convoluted plot and a conspiracy that is genuinely chilling.

There are other good crime writers out there who echo Ellroy's work. George Pelecanos is an excellent writer (he writes for The Wire) is book Hard Revolution is a searing portrayal of the race divisions of 1960s Washington. The history, the setting and the dialogue are all gripping. David Peace is probably the most similar author, and his Red Riding quartet does for the 1970s North of England what Ellroy did for 1950s Los Angeles. Peace's style is very similar, stripped-down and almost poetic but it is far from just being an imitation. Like Peace and Ellroy, Jake Arnott paints a compelling picture of police corruption in a distant time and culture, mixing reality and fiction, and Arnott's The Long Firm and successors were dramatised. All are excellent writers and crime authors, far above the pot-boilers that are routinely churned out by other crime writers, and Ellroy towers above them all.

I have the signature "JE" scrawled on various grubby paperbacks from an Edinburgh book signing back in 1996, when he released My Dark Places, a fearless memoir of his mother's murder and his chaotic early adulthood. He also wrote "Your jacket rocks" on one of the books for some reason known only to him, but which makes me smile at the memory.

Anyway, get it now and read it. I'm nearly halfway through the 600-odd pages and it's gripping. As with all his novels, if you blink and miss a word you will need to go back and re-read a chapter. You'll find yourself on Google and Wiki trying to separate fact from fiction as well.

This is the end of an era indeed.....