James Ellroy--whose haunting experiences, in particular the shocking murder of his mother, formed him as a child, shaped his young adult years, and led him later to combine lyricism and violence in his novels--might be called the James Joyce of American hard-boiled fiction. As did Joyce, Ellroy draws on family and social history as inspiration in his fiction, loves words for sound as well as meaning, relies on stream of consciousness as a major storytelling technique, and at times is so experimental in his prose that he makes extraordinary demands upon the reader. From Brown's Requiem (1981), his first novel, through and beyond his poignant memoir, My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir (1996), Ellroy 's work seethes with violence, rage, and poetry. The tender, lyric quality of his writing, in sharp contrast to the violent images he often evokes, is apparent in the prologue of My Dark Places...