Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.

by James Ellroy

Book Overview

Los Angeles. In no other city do sex, celebrity, money, and crime exert such an irresistible magnetic field. And no writer has mapped that field with greater savagery and savvy than James Ellroy. With this fever-hot collection of reportage and short fiction, he returns to his native habitat and portrays it as a smog-shrouded netherworld where"every third person is a peeper, prowler, pederast, or pimp." From the scandal sheets of the 1950s to this...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037570471X
• ISBN13: 9780375704710
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Best Ever Reader!

For a great unabridged read try this Books on Tape Audio edition read by Michael Prichard who adapts the character voices adroitly, showing an uncanny ear. He's an L.A. based actor who has read several hundred audiobooks; that's actually over 300! What a pro! There may or may not be other versions, but I for one will stick to the best!

Couldn't stop reading it.

Crime wave is the book that made me the James Ellroy fan I am today. From the first sentence, I was hooked. Crime wave is a book of short stories, actual true crime cases, and a few essays written by Ellroy for GQ Magazine.Reading Ellroy is almost like singing along with a tune on the radio, it's all about rythm. Included are a story about Ellroy's Mother's unsolved murder and another fictitious story involving Dick Contino. The stories that I loved most of all though, were the stories told by Danny Getchell, the dirt digger for HUSH-HUSH magazine.All in all, I loved Crime Wave because it is a look at 1950s crime in L.A. I think Ellroy fans and non-Ellroy fans alike, should do themselves a favor and pick up a copy of CRIME WAVE.

a cornucopia of crime, cover-ups and corpus delecti

A breezy read; a good introduction for the Ellroy neophyte. A nice melange of stories -- both fiction and non-fiction -- that will whet you appetite for more Ellroy. To the reviewer from Ashland, PA., are you kidding! Please go back and re-read the last chapter, "Let's Twist Again." This is Ellroy at his warmest, most poignant and accessible moment in print.

Keep them coming

I can't get enough of this guy. The short stories included are great, the true crime is better.

awesome book on acid

I bought this book the day it came out. I read most of the articles before in GQ, but they are still hilarious. Also interesting is next month's new Getchell story, a fine sermon on the sleaze of Frank Sinatra, it even condemns Hubert Humphrey for the sake of some sinsational alliteration