My Dark Places, James Ellroy
My Dark Places, James Ellroy
2 Rating(s)
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My Dark Places
A True Crime Autobiography

Author: James Ellroy

Narrator: Michael Prichard

Unabridged: 14 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/23/2019


Synopsis

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy presents another literary masterpiece, this time a true crime murder mystery about his own mother.

In 1958 Jean Ellroy was murdered, her body dumped on a roadway in a seedy L.A. suburb.  Her killer was never found, and the police dismissed her as a casualty of a cheap Saturday night. James Ellroy was ten when his mother died, and he spent the next thirty-six years running from her ghost and attempting to exorcize it through crime fiction. In 1994, Ellroy quit running.  He went back to L.A., to find out the truth about his mother--and himself.  

In My Dark Places, our most uncompromising crime writer tells what happened when he teamed up with a brilliant homicide cop to investigate a murder that everyone else had forgotten--and reclaim the mother he had despised, desired, but never dared to love. What ensues is a epic of loss, fixation, and redemption, a memoir that is also a history of the American way of violence.

About The Author

JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy--American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover--and the L.A. Quartet novels, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L. A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He lives in Colorado.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bobby on March 29, 2018

Because there is no secret what this book is about, I didn’t feel the need to mark it as containing spoilers. If, however, you are coming at this book cold, and don’t know the well-publicized story of Ellroy’s dark past, you might want to skip this review. While I loved the film adaptation of Ellroy’......more

Goodreads review by Chris on September 11, 2009

You won, Mr. Ellroy. You won. It took 283 pages. Your short, staccato sentences finally defeated me. I couldn't take it anymore. So I quit. If I were to meet you in person, you'd laugh at me. You'd call yourself a genius. You'd call me a fucking idiot. You'd be right. You are a genius. I am a fuckin......more

Goodreads review by Dave on February 02, 2022

Since I read James Ellroy’s (fictional) The Black Dahlia I have had his (memoir) My Dark Places on my list. The Black Dahlia is one of the best known true crime LA stories about a woman who was killed and left in an abandoned lot. Many women were killed in LA before that, of course, and many after t......more

Goodreads review by Paul on August 23, 2019

SHORT REVIEW A transcendent high-octane memoir that burns all other memoirs to the ground. A five star must read. LITTLE BIT LONGER REVIEW Rereading nonfiction is a rarity for me but for the second time this stunning book left me convinced that James Ellroy is one of the Greatest Living Authors. And y......more

Goodreads review by brian on October 18, 2009

in the grand tradition started by those two saucy goodreads wenches (that's karen and 'tambo, of course), i present my own offering: a pic of one of my heroes, james 'demon dog' ellroy, with his arm around me and manny. further down is another pic of him shouting profanities and right-wing slogans i......more


Quotes

"Ellroy is more powerful than ever."
--The Nation  

"Astonishing . . . original, daring, brilliant."
--Philadelphia Inquirer