The big somewhere: essays on James Ellroy's noir world

James Ellroy's identity as a crime writer is rooted in his extraordinary life story and relationship with his home city of Los Angeles.

Beginning with the unsolved murder of his mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, in 1958, Ellroy's early life played a large role in shaping his obsessions with murder, the criminal underworld of L.A. and the redemptive power of the feminine. Ellroy's life could be seen as a brutal, visceral and emotionally exhausting realisation of the American Dream, a theme he has explored in his writing to the extent that he is credited with reinventing crime fiction.

This book is an in-depth, scholarly study of the work of James Ellroy, featuring leading Ellroy scholars such as Anna Flügge, Jim Mancall, and Rodney Taveira.