The Best American Crime Writing 2005

Уорд Литтел, юрист, работающий на ФБР, прибывает в Даллас в день убийства Джона Кеннеди. Его задача — вмешаться в ход расследования и скрыть улики, изобличающие организаторов покушения — людей, связанных с мафией. В этом ему помогает Пит Бондюран, наемный убийца и наркоторговец, участник военных операций ЦРУ на Кубе. Одновременно с ними в Далласе оказывается полицейский Уэйн Тедроу, разыскивающий негра-сутенера, которого ему предложили убить за шесть тысяч долларов.

В следующие пять лет эти трое оказываются участниками разнообразных преступных авантюр, включая героиновую торговлю во Вьетнаме, незаконные поставки американского оружия на Кубу, убийство Мартина Лютера Кинга и Роберта Кеннеди, а также сделку между миллиардером Говардом Хьюзом и мафией, предметом которой стал город Лас-Вегас.

The movie Janet Maslin of the New York Times calls:

"Gangbusters! A shrewd, elegant film with a flawless ensemble cast and style to burn"; L.A. Confidential is an epic crime novel that stands as a steel-edged time capsule-Los Angeles in the 1950s, a remarkable era defined in dark shadings.

A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law-three cops treading quicksand in the middle.

Detective Ed Exley wants glory. Haunted by his father's success as a policeman, he will pay any price, break any law to eclipse him.

Detective Bud White watched his own father murder his mother-he is now bent on random vengeance, a time bomb with a badge.

Celebrity cop Jack Vincennes shakes down movie stars for a scandal magazine. An old secret possesses him-he'll do anything to keep it buried.

Three cops in a spiral, a nightmare that tests loyalty and courage, a nightmare that offers no mercy, allows for no survivors. Here is James Ellroy's masterpiece… darkness to haunt you in shades of red, gray, and black.

In his introduction to the The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, 'noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.' Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction.

James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing - 1910-2010 - to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir's twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain's 'Pastorale,' and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade.

The Black Dahlia is a police novel on an epic scale; a classic period piece that provides a startling conclusion to America’s most infamous unsolved murder mystery. Already hailed as a masterpiece, it establishes James Ellroy as this country’s most powerful living writer of noir fiction. On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia, and her murder sparks the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and adversaries in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia — driven by dark needs to know everything about her life, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl’s twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches — into a region of total madness. With the no-punches-held style that has become the trademark of a James Ellroy novel, this brilliant and savagely original author launches the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the violent world of the ’40s L.A. cop.