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L.A. Confidential
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition cover |
|
| Author | James Ellroy |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Jacket design by Paul Gamarello Jacket illustration by Stephen Peringer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | L.A. Quartet |
| Genre(s) | Novel, crime fiction |
| Publisher | The Mysterious Press |
| Publication date | June 1990 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) and audio cassette |
| Pages | 496 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-89296-293-3 (first edition, hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Big Nowhere |
| Followed by | White Jazz |
L.A. Confidential is a 1990 crime fiction novel by James Ellroy. It is the third of Ellroy's L.A. Quartet series.
The story is about Los Angeles policemen in the 1950s who are caught up in a mixture of lies, sex, corruption, and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story eventually encompasses organized crime, political corruption, heroin, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism, institutional racism, plastic surgery, and Hollywood. The novel's title refers to the infamous 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, which becomes Hush-Hush magazine in the book.
Jack Vincennes is a slick and likable Hollywood cop who moonlights as the technical advisor for Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-like television show. Vincennes is connected with Hush-Hush: He receives hefty payoffs for making orchestrated celebrity arrests, often involving narcotics, that will attract even more readers to the magazine—and more fame to himself.
Edmund Exley, the son of a legendary LAPD cop, is a brilliant detective determined to outdo his father. His intelligence, his education, his glasses, his insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor all contribute to Ed's social isolation from other officers. He increases the resentment against him by testifying against cops in a police brutality case (based on the Bloody Christmas incident) early in the novel.
Wendell "Bud" White, the most feared man in the LAPD, is a six-foot tall muscleman. His partner is convicted by Exley's testimony and expelled from the police force, and Bud vows revenge. He has a violent obsession against men who abuse women, counterbalanced by his tenderness towards the victims. His temper often overpowers his thought.
At different intervals, the three men begin to investigate the Nite Owl case, which reveals deep ties of corruption to within their own precinct.
The book was adapted for a 1997 film of the same title, directed and cowritten by Curtis Hanson and starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn and Danny DeVito.
| James Ellroy |
|---|
| Bibliography |
| Stand-alone: Brown's Requiem | Clandestine | Killer on the Road |
| Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy: Blood on the Moon | Because the Night | Suicide Hill |
| L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia | The Big Nowhere | L.A. Confidential | White Jazz |
| American Underworld Trilogy: American Tabloid | The Cold Six Thousand | [untitled third book] |
| Short story collections: Hollywood Nocturnes | Crime Wave | Destination: Morgue! |
| Non-Fiction: My Dark Places |
| Films |
| Adaptations: Cop | L.A. Confidential | Brown's Requiem | Stay Clean | The Black Dahlia | White Jazz |
| Original Screenplays: Dark Blue | The Night Watchman |
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