Rating: 
Summary: Astonishing
Review: I read this in one sitting. It is compelling, bold and brave. It is also one of the most honest accounts of young adulthood - almost shocking in its candour. And every word was integral to the web of understanding which the author was trying to enmesh us in (successfully).A masterpiece. If you like Ellroy, or are fascinated by the psychology of the impact of a crime like murder, this is a must-read.
Rating:
Summary: Murder of author's mother
Review: Over the years, crime writer James Ellroy has put up a macho front about the brutal death of his mother Jean, aka Geneva, in 1958, referring to it as "the whack" and "the Geneva snuff". His mother was raped and strangled, her body dumped near a school in El Monte, CA, a run-down white-trash suburb of L.A. The crime remained unsolved.
Never sure if he was actually sad at his mother's death--his parents were separated and his mother was given custody, even though he wanted to live with his father--Elroy became obsessed by a more celebrated unsolved murder, that of Elizabeth Short, the so-called Black Dahlia. After years of petty crime, drug abuse and alcoholism, he became a successful writer, using the Black Dahlia case as the basis for his bestselling novel of the same name, in which he finally perfected his ultra-hardboiled, violent and cynical style, looking into L.A.'s corrupt heart of darkness. My Dark Places grew out of a story he wrote for GQ magazine in which he went to see the police files on his mother's slaying, which included graphic photographs and autopsy reports. Ellroy employed a former homicide detective to re-investigate his mother's murder, going over some of the suspects, witnesses and detectives from the original case. More importantly, Ellroy, for the first time, re-examined his own feelings for his mother, looking into her secret life after years of having abandoned her. This account is genuinely appalling and, unlike the novels, Ellroy makes no secret of the pain, frustration, fear, sense of loss and the knowledge that he himself has been wrong about his mother for most of his life. My Dark Places is one of the most courageous books ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing real-life murder story
Review: I've read several books by James Ellroy. I was prepared to not like "My Dark Places," but it held me for all of its 428 pages. I didn't want to put it down. I think it's his best book (his only nonfiction book as far as I know). In spite of the unpleasant subject matter (the murder of his mother in 1958) and the graphic detail, it's very accessible to read. It makes a lot of fiction seem trivial in comparison. If you want to take a a "walk on the wild side" vicariously, this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: A Dark and Disturbing Memoir of Real Life Noir
Review: Over the past twenty years, James Ellroy has written nearly a dozen novels that have established him as the foremost contemporary successor to the noir crime fiction of forerunners such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett and James Cain. Set primarily in Los Angeles (although some of his novels, such as "American Tabloid", have taken on bigger settings and themes), Ellroy's narratives are marked by what one critic has described as a "telegraphic" style, one short sentence following another in a breathless staccato of hard-boiled language, graphic (at times grisly) description, and a pervasive, and often seemingly morbid and pessimistic, obsession with sexual crime and violence. Ellroy is an astonishingly good writer, albeit a writer who is not for everyone: his vivid and grotesquely detailed explorations of rape and murder, of men preying on woman, of brutal police practices, often make the reader squeamish and uncomfortable. The effect is powerful testimony to the talent. But where does Ellroy's remarkable writing come from? "My Dark Places," subtitled "An L.A. Crime Memoir," provides an answer: from the real life noir of Ellroy's life. On a Sunday morning in June, 1958, James Ellroy's forty-five year old mother, Jean, was murdered. Her body was found in a vacant lot next to a school in El Monte, California, a gritty, working class city east of Los Angeles. "A nylon stocking and a cotton cord were lashed around her neck. Both ligatures were tightly knotted." James Ellroy was ten years old at the time. His parents were divorced. He had just returned home from a weekend visit with his father when he was told about the murder. While a "Swarthy Man" was seen with the victim, the murder was never solved. "My Dark Places" tells the story of Jean Ellroy's murder in 1958. It also tells the story of the next twenty years of James Ellroy's life, when he drifted to drugs and alcohol, to an obsession with crimes of sex and violence, to a kind of noirish bottom which was the prelude to his life as a writer. It tells the story of how the noir obsessions of Ellroy's fictions were the creative and self-sustaining response to the dark episodes of his real life. And, finally, it tells the story of Ellroy's renewed search for his mother's murderer and, along the way, his search for his mother herself. In Ellroy's words: "I knew things about us. I sensed other things. Her death corrupted my imagination and gave me exploitable gift. My mother gave me the gift and the curse of obsession. It began as curiosity in lieu of childish grief. It flourished as a quest for dark knowledge and mutated into a horrible thirst for sexual and mental stimulation. Obsessive drives almost killed me. A rage to turn my obsessions into something good and useful saved me. I outlived the curse. The gift assumed its final form in language." "My Dark Places" is a dark and disturbing memoir, an intimate plunge into the life and the psyche of James Ellroy. It is also, like his novels, a chilling exploration of real life crimes of sex and violence in Los Angeles, Ellroy's search for his mother's murderer being the touchstone for a narrative contrail of grisly and perverse crimes that he encounters along the way.
Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Memoir
Review: On a spring Sunday afternoon of 1958, 10-year-old James Ellroy returned to his El Monte residence after spending a weekend with his father. He wondered why the residence was surrounded by police cars and uniformed officers. Ellroy was quickly informed that his mother had been killed. Jean Ellroy, a former Midwest beauty contest winner who had come to Southern California in hopes of becoming a film star, had been raped, then strangled, her body left in an empty lot next door to a school. The tragic death prompted Ellroy's life to spin into a web of tragedy and confusion and he did not find himself and end his turbulent existence until he reached his thirties. After his mother's death young Ellroy went to live with his father. His parents had divorced and his father, an accountant who once worked for screen siren Rita Hayworth, was going to seed through alcohol. At a time when Ellroy needed stability and proper attention he received neither. Ellroy sought recognition in the wrong way. Attending a predominantly Jewish school in West Los Angeles, he successfully shocked and antagonized his schoolmates after riding his bicycle to Hollywood and obtaining anti-Semitic right wing hate literature from the notorious John Birchite local bookstore, "Poor Richard's," reading the material, then unleashing it on his schoolmates. He also lost himself in a world of alcohol and drugs, holed up in an abandoned residence at one point, and burgled homes in the area. His life began taking a different turn when he went to work at a ritzy local country club. Though he was ultimately fired after a physical altercation, it was here that Ellroy stumbled on what would become a lucrative profession that would make him an international celebrity. Still seeking to comprehend the meaning of his mother's unsolved murder, Ellroy began reading Jack Webb's magazine regularly. Webb became famous in the fifties as the creator of the hugely successful "Dragnet" television series, which he produced and starred in, playing a Los Angeles police detective. Ellroy read the magazines religiously, began reading crime novels of the greats such as Chandler and Hammett, and finally began writing himself. It was anything but coincidental that one of Ellroy's biggest hits was "The Black Dahlia" based on the character Elizabeth Short, who came to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming a film star, was brutally murdered, and left in a vacant lot by her killer. The facts closely paralleled the life and death of Jean Ellroy. When Ellroy achieved riches and renown, also producing such runaway bestsellers as "American Tabloid" and "L.A. Confidential," the latter becoming a highly successful film, he turned his attention to the detective case which had dominated his mind from 1958, the unsolved murder of his mother. Ellroy secured the services of retired Los Angeles homicide detective Bill Stoner to assist him in his effort to crack the case. Ultimately Stoner would become the detective novelist's best friend as they revisited crime scenes in and around El Monte and closely re-examined all available evidence. While their cumulative efforts would not result in finding the killer or killers of Jean Ellroy, the novelist would find the experience cathartic. He came to know his mother in a way he never had earlier. One of the most interesting aspects of the investigation was the interview of a woman who had been working as a car hop at a drive in, believed to be the last person to see Jean Ellroy alive aside from her killer. The woman described Jean as a gregarious, friendly woman. The man with her, however, was uncommunicative. The description she gave of a tall, swarthy, dark-haired man correlates with the disclosures of others who earlier that night saw Jean drinking with a man fitting that description at an El Monte nightclub-bar. The same man had been seen at the same establishment as well as another in the area prior to that night. He would never be seen again in the area. Speculation further abounded over the murder by strangulation of a woman not far from where Jean Ellroy met her death about a year later. If the suspect in question had been a serial killer, however, using that MO, then a question emerged: Why was there no further evidence of future murders or attempts? The best guess as to what happened to Jean Ellroy was furnished by those who concluded that her killer, expecting sex, ran into resistance. Deciding to take her despite her resistance, spurred on by alcohol, he ultimately concluded that it was better to kill Jean Ellroy rather than risk her reporting the rape to the police. It was very late, dark, and there was presumably no one around so the rapist decided to opt for murder to silence Jean Ellroy. Police investigators speculate that he was an intelligent, perhaps well educated man due to the thoroughness displayed subsequent to the killing. In that he was never seen in El Monte again he might well have been from another area. This is a work perhaps even more riveting than Ellroy's traditional page-turning fiction in that this is a story of a young boy who lost his mother at the impressionable age of 10, and who was determined to understand Jean Ellroy better and reach a measure of closure in his life.
Rating:
Summary: A RAW autobiography.
Review: In reality, this is more than a memoir--it's an urban composition that paints a picture of a city suspended in time, and a murder that still remains unsolved. It tells the story of a lost child and the man he becomes, detailing the crooked path it took to get there. More importantly, it tells the story of a child who lost his mother to foul play, and the man who rediscovers who she was by studying the evidence surrounding her case. This was my first Ellroy book, and let me tell you, I was not disappointed. I've read autobiographies in the past that reeked with the air of insencerity. It seemed that the authors focused on insubstantial fluff as a gesture of self-promotion--putting on airs, so to speak--while completely ignoring anything even remotely negative. Ellroy does more than expose the less than pleasant points of his life, he revels in it. What guts! This guy doesn't just open old wounds, he douses them with salt. Is it an uncomfortable book? At times, yes. Is it a rewarding read? Definately. It's truely refreshing to see a best-selling author expose himself with such sheer honesty.
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece book
Review: I've read the books of James Ellroy and I concluded that he is the most important contemporary north-american writer in the sense of his work: the art of writing. This book is necessary for the reading of the others because is autobiographical - it's important to remember the hard life of the author, the death of his mother (this fact was a crime), the absence of his father, the superation of these and other trauma by the way of reading and writing - and because it serves as a map of the work at all. Perhaps I recommend as the second reading his story book and so the fiction and romance. Ellroy is a classic, not only a noir writer or police/crime/suspense writer - he is a classic writer: it's not sufficient one reading and it's necessary the reading. He is an example of resistence, creativity and vitality. Together with Philip Roth, the contemporary american literature has a treasure and the world literature a revival.
Rating: 
Summary: Perverse, grotesque, obsessive!
Review: James Ellroy steals the spotlight of a horrendous crime. This "best true crime book of the year" turned out to be a tell all of his perverted world of drugs and sex. The moment I thought I would be able to learn more or anything at all about the actual murder, Ellroy included his personal memoirs to twisted sexual fantasies. When anything pertaining to the actual homocide was mentioned it was as though the police logbook was restated. I was extremely disappointed as well as turned off by Ellroy's explicit descriptions of immoral acts unrelated to the actual murder. This book does not do Jean Ellroy or her murder justice!
Rating:
Summary: You will feel his pain
Review: This is the true story about the unsolved murder of James Ellroy's mother, and his attempt to help police solve the murder years later. If you have ever read an Ellroy book, and been touched by the ease in which he writes about death, now you will know what personal experiences he draws his ability from. This book could read like fiction, but it is not.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, dark and intense
Review: This is a remarkable book. If there were a five-plus rating, that is what I'd give to this astonishing work of art. James Ellroy's quest is to solve the 1958 murder of his mother. Along the way, we learn about his twisted adolescence, and his brushes with madness, depicted brilliantly. The reader has to have come to grips with his or her own demons in order to be comfortable reading this book, in that Ellroy's feelings for his murdered mother include the incestuous feelings Freud always claimed we all feel for our opposite sex parents. Ellroy describes these feelings with enormous intensity. In fact, this book is all about intensity, from the first page to the last. I've read any number of true crime books, and though this is not exactly a true crime read, that's about as close as the reader can come to describing it. In the books I've read, the victims have, unfortunately, not been described intently enough that I've really remembered them after I've finished the book. With My Dark Places, Ellroy so intensely describes his mother, Jean, that she is as real to me as someone I knew intimately. I think, in fact, that "intimate" describes this entire book. Rather than give away any of the story, let me just say that this book is as intimate as a dark night's sexual encounter with someone dangerous. This is one of the best books of any kind that I've yet read.
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