From the Guardian's mini-profile of James Ellroy: Ellroy's own summary of his life runs thus: "Boy's mother murdered. Boy's life shattered. Boy grows up homeless alcoholic jailbird. Jailbird cleans up and writes his way to salvation. Jailbird becomes the Mad Dog of American Crime Fiction." Ellroy's fiction is raw, fetid, bloody, brutal and peopled with every type of human scum; it also crackles and zips with a sort of virtual reality glare, the shocking degeneration of his characters matched only by the mesmerising power of his excoriating style. He complains that "French interviewers all insist that I must be in terrible pain to write these dark, awful books. I say no, you don't get it, Froggy, I'm having a blast."Is there a bigger fan of Ellroy's work than this guy?
"The Rap Sheet" is ready for Brian De Palma's big screen version of The Black Dahlia.
--Marshal Zeringue
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