Ellroy

James Ellroy is a powerful writer. I can't recall a book that I have read that had greater power than "The Black Dahlia" which was based on the famous unsolved Hollywood murder. Some of the passages and paragraphs are simply incredible. He's also a bit of an iconoclast and doesn't easily break into an assignable box. I heard that in action once when he was interviewed by the insipid John Ailee of PBS here in my city, a daily host with a haughty outlook on life and politics who assumed that Ellroy, because he was a writer of books would share the same sensibilities. This interview occurred shortly after one of the numerous scandals involving women that President Clinton had allegedly porked while in or shortly before office. The effete Ailee asked Ellroy about his thoughts on this particular scandal in a tone that suggested disgust at another unfair allegation against the president. Conroy replied on live radio in distinct, measured words, "I think Bill Clinton is a lying sack of shit." I think Ailee promptly wet himself.

This leads to a sort of elegy that Ellroy wrote about a young girl that he briefly knew who was recently brutally murdered in LA (Ellroy's own mother was also murdered which launched his fascination with the crime) http://www.newsweek.com/id/209941, Ellroy has a new book coming out in September and it looks good. The ugly son of a bitch can flat out write.