Some writers expand as they develop; others deepen. James Ellroy—the self-proclaimed “Demon Dog” of American crime fiction, the author of sprawling epics such as L.A. Confidential, The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, and an accumulating series of half-fantastical exposés of corruption in golden-age Hollywood (The Enchanters, the latest in this series, is due out in September)—is superficially a writer who expands, but fundamentally one who deepens.
When the late Mike Davis, the Marxist urban historian and activist, once chastised Ellroy for producing “his ‘post-Noir’ potboilers in a basement office in Eastchester, New York—3,000 miles from the scene of the crime,” he stated what should have been obvious: the Los Angeles of Ellroy’s novels is a map of his own mind, in which he hunts for the hidden wellsprings.
