James Ellroy - 1948
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San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California
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Courtney King and John Wade.I. Biography
James Ellroy, born in 1948 in Los Angeles California, led a very
harsh childhood. He saw his mother murdered in front of his eyes in 1958, when he was ten years old. This led to him to become fascinated with murdered women, especially the infamous, unsolved "Black Dahlia" case. It is this
fascination that led to his writing of crime novels. His crime novels are set in the Los Angeles of the 1950's. He has been writing crime novels for the past 15 years, before that
his life was filled with drugs, shoplifting, homelessness, petty crime, white supremacist, and jail time. Ellroy is now married to Helen Ellroy, who has helped him though many difficult times in his lifetime.
In 1985 and 1986 Ellroy wrote the book Black Dahlia about the "Black Dahlia" case. He used his mom's death to promote the book and doing this caused him terrible heartache. He used the book Black Dahlia
to express his grief over his mother's death. Ellroy now lives in Kansas City and vows that he will never live in a big city again. He has also vowed to stop writing about Los Angeles partly because his book, Dark Places
(his memoir), helped him deal with his mom's death and also that since there is no closure and never will he feel he has gotten as close to closure as he possibly can. II. Literary Works Brown's Requiem (1981) IV. Ellroy on the Web
Clandestine (1982)
Blood on the Moon (1984)
Because the night (1984)
Suicide Hill (1986)
Silent Terror (1986)
The Black Dahlia (1987)
The Big Nowhere (1988)
L.A. Confidential (1990)
White Jazz (1992)
Dick Contino's Blues and Other Stories (1994)
Hollywood Nocturnes (1995)
American Tabloid (1995)
My Dark Places (1996)
Crime Wave (1999)
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/1906/english.htm
This essay was submitted by a student of Kathy Honda Stein, a teacher at San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California.