Rating: 
Summary: For die-hard Ellroy fans only
Review: I'm at a loss to understand the raves here for this book. My only familiarity with Ellroy being the wonderful film of L.A. Confidential, I thought, as Michiko Kakutani did, that My Dark Places would "serve as an introduction for new readers to this gifted writer's disturbing oeuvre." Like Kakutani, I was wrong. My Dark Places is an overlong, precious, redundant and annoying book.Every beginning writing course teaches two absolutes: First, the fact that something actually happened does not automatically make it either interesting or dramatically relevant. Second, the character in your story that is most like you is almost always the least interesting. Ellroy is no neophyte, but he stumbles into both minefields and is blown to pieces. Making it worse are Ellroy's constant grandiose references to the brilliance of his own writing, made ludicrous by his efforts here: Short, punchy sentences adding up to...boredom. "Shocking" revelations of petty crime, masturbation, Electra fantasies and Benzedrine abuse that accrete to...yawns. Suffering from an obvious lack of fact to base the book on, Ellroy resorts to retelling the same series of events several times, from several points of view, like "Rashomon." Unlike "Rashomon," the end result is irritation, as there is little new insight gained from each retelling. And when sheer repetition fails to bulk up the book enough, Ellroy includes - verbatim - long transcripts of many rather dull witness interrogations, all of which ultimately lead nowhere. If Ellroy is trying to make us feel the tedium and endless dead-ends of a murder investigation, he succeeds too well. But I suspect the real reason was his first draft wasn't thick enough. But then even his main story runs dry, so Ellroy starts chronicling - at great length - the rather prosaic life experiences of an L.A. Sheriff's Dept. Homicide detective, and the progress of various, completely unrelated, L.A. County homicide investigations. The other murders are more interesting than Ellroy's mother's, but you get the feeling that every retired homicide cop in the world has written his own book filled with exactly the same stuff....and you don't buy those books. Try as he might, Ellroy never manages to make his mother a vivid, engaging personality for us. But as the book grinds on, one begins to suspect that his failure is not completely his fault. It gradually becomes clear that Geneva Ellroy's death was the most interesting thing about her. No doubt researching and writing the book was a great catharsis for Ellroy. But like the onanism which Ellroy recounts here at such tedious length, there's little in it for anyone else.
Rating: 
Summary: You need to read his earlier work to understand this book
Review: Like many fans and anti-fans of James Ellroy, my first contact with his work came when I saw the movie "L. A. Confidential." I have long had an affinity for the L.A. detective genre, and I settled in to buy and read all of Ellroy's books, beginning with the LA Quartet, moving on to American Tabloid, then returning to his early, mid-1980s novels including Brown's Requiem. Ellroy took the traditional path of an author; he read hundreds of books in his chosen genre, he wrote a few early novels in which he learned his craft, and honed his style in the late 1980s. The LA Quartet was a breakthrough, the most entertaining group of books I have ever read...period. I did not pick up "My Dark Places" until I had read all of his novels. In my opinion, those readers who don't like "My Dark Places" don't really understand Ellroy the man or his work. They can't get past the blackness, the violence, the language, etc. Most can't understand that an American can live like Ellroy did the first three decades of his life. Books give us a window into a world that is not our own. It allows us to glimpse, at safe remove, people and situations that we otherwise cannot predict or invent--after all, the worst epithet a critic can ascribe to a publication is "predictable." We cannot abide predictability in our entertainment, we live in it all day, every day. Ellroy's books step far, far away from predictability, yet have a veneer of believability...we read "American Tabloid" and think that yes, it could have happened that way. "My Dark Places" brings unpredictable entertainment and reality one step closer to each other. We see the reality that, thank God, happened to someone else. As dedicated experience junkies, it is entertaining, thrilling...yet safe. We're built with blinders on, we have safety stopgaps, both inherent and through training. Adolescent boys won't read this book (or any other) and turn into lunatics, though there exist unsavory subcultures in America who would take great delight if that were the case. No, this is an experience that is simply too much for some people. These are the people who claim they don't like the book. It overwhelms them. How about you? Are you a thrillseeker?
Rating:
Summary: Compelling. Total page turner.
Review: When I met "Lee" Ellroy in junior high school in 1959, we knew his mother had died, but we did not know how. I lost track of Lee after we graduated, and was reintroduced to him when he became James. "My Dark Places" is shocking in it's truth, and for me a trip down memory lane, because I knew the boy who lived through this horrible experience.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of in-depth true crime analysis
Review: I am a devoted fan of James Ellroy's work and My Dark Places is the source and raison d'etre for all his other work. After experiencing his own mother's murder and how this in turn affected his life, I feel he is by far truly qualified to narrate tales of LA street violence and criminal compulsion-he has lived it first person and this work candidly reveals his innermost thoughts and personal investigation into his mother's murder. My biggest hope throughout the reading was that the killer himself would make contact and fill in the missing essential of that fateful night. Weird- I was also born in 48, grew up in Glendale California and got hooked on my own unsolved-the murder of a classmate that will forever haunt me. I understand the need to solve the crime so the victim can at least have some partial power restored.
Rating:
Summary: Honest and Brutal
Review: Mr. Ellroy takes on the difficult task of confronting the ghost of his murdered mother, and he deals with his confusion, anger, love and hate with an unparalleled honesty. I have not previously read Ellroy's fiction, but look forward to it now. It is rare for someone to write of their pain with such insight, without the sentimentality one generally finds in autobiographical works. Superb, gritty, and highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Ellroy's Life is Just as Fascinating as his Fiction
Review: This true crime memoir reads like fiction (or more accurately Ellroy's fiction). Here's where all the fuel for his fantastic noir novels comes from. I found the sections on the initial investigation in 958, and Ellroy's own in the 1990's to be the most interesting of the book, but reading about his life is both shocking and eye opening as well. A great read.
Rating: 
Summary: One-Way Trip in a Fancy Car
Review: This initially provocative story was written with such great style, the realization that it wasn't making any real progress was slow in coming. One must appreciate the guts and talent it took to write it, but can't help feeling cheated & abandoned in a strange place. Perhaps that was his point.
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing, compelling, disgusting, and more
Review: Readers now know why James Ellroy's novels are filled with so much evil and sordidness. As "My Dark Places" reveals, his novels are filled with mirror shards of his own life. The book is not for everyone (reading these online reviews shows that clearly). It is compelling to those who are drawn to his novels by the sharp dialogue, the seamy characters, and the sense that real life is exactly like his stories. I can't say I "enjoyed" the book just like I can't say I enjoyed driving past the scene of a car crash. But reading this book gave me the same feeling I get when I drive by the scene of a car crash. I had to look.
Rating:
Summary: Unsettling and moving
Review: At times, I wondered if Ellroy's profanity was a gimmick. By the end, I didn't care: so eloquently and savagely does Ellroy expose the evil that men do.
Rating:
Summary: An Intense Self-Portrait Of An Obsessed Soul.
Review: James Ellroy has delivered a no-holds barred self -portrait which can only be described as frank and brutal of his tortured existence as defined by the tragedy arising from a once failed relationship with his mother and her murder. With a powerful play of prose almost poetic, Ellroy takes his reader to the darkest corners of his existence and brings to light the very episodes of his life which created the worlds in his novel.The end is one filled with hope,reconciliation and self forgiveness.Readers like myself,will find themselves satisfied as the author through his journey after once past sharing his dark places.Kudos, Mr. Ellroy!
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