The murder, along with reading The Badge by Jack Webb (a book comprising sensational cases from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department, a birthday gift from his father), were important events of Ellroy's youth. His father was more permissive and allowed Ellroy to do as he pleased, namely be 'left alone to read, to go out and peep through windows, prowl around and sniff the air.' The police never found his mother's killer, and the case still remains unsolved. His first reaction upon hearing of her death was relief: he could now live with his father, whom he preferred. Ellroy later described his mother as 'sharp-tongued bad-tempered', unable to keep a steady job, alcoholic, and sexually promiscuous. On June 22, 1958, when Ellroy was ten years old, his mother was raped and murdered. Ellroy stated that 'I lived for naked glimpses. He struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship with her, and tried to catch glimpses of her nude. Īt the age of 7, Ellroy saw his mother naked and began to sexually fantasize about her. His parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved to El Monte, California. His father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. His mother, Geneva Odelia (née Hilliker), was a nurse.

Lee Earle 'James' Ellroy was born in Los Angeles, California. Confidential (1990), White Jazz (1992), American Tabloid (1995), The Cold Six Thousand (2001), and Blood's a Rover (2009). Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987), The Big Nowhere (1988), L.A.

Lee Earle 'James' Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American crime fiction writer and essayist.

Nowhere Boulevard by Katherine Black