This Storm

Ellroy writes with raw power … James Ellroy writes big … Ellroy is undeniably one of the most influential crime writers of our time . But can the raw energy of his fiction outweigh the disgustingness and balderdash? Yes; if you see his novels as antidotes to the fake sunshine that Los Angeles, via the big screen, has blown in the world’s face for a century.

Ellroy writes with raw power … James Ellroy writes big … Ellroy is undeniably one of the most influential crime writers of our time . But can the raw energy of his fiction outweigh the disgustingness and balderdash? Yes; if you see his novels as antidotes to the fake sunshine that Los Angeles, via the big screen, has blown in the world’s face for a century.

James Ellroy is one of America’s greatest living crime novelists … This Storm [is] a tangled fever-dream set in 1942 Los Angeles … Good, unclean fun … Ellroy offers a grandiose, Wagnerian vision of wartime LA … Packed with almost every Ellroy obsession under the sun : murder, robbery, rape and torture; small-time corruption and big-time history; sexual intrigue and moral ambivalence; lust, yearning, racism, alcoholism, degeneracy and drug abuse; plastic surgery, prostitution, policemen and paedophilia; scandal, sodomy and sin … I will live and die an Ellroy fanboy .

Ellroy remains one of the most exciting literary stylists in the English language … It’s been five years since the last novel from the self-described “Demon Dog” of American letters, but it’s worth the wait. Like all good jazzmen, Ellroy works very hard indeed to make his music flow so easily.

James Ellroy writes coarse, prurient, paranoid novels that often turn out to be masterpieces ... Truffling for atrocities in the dirty reality of crime seems to inspire him with a demonic energy that his distinctive telegraphic style is the perfect instrument to convey … There are some terrific stretches – including an account of the “Battle of Los Angeles”, the night in 1942 when a mass delusion arose that the city was under aerial attack – that ranks among his best setpieces.

Ellroy has never been a five-pages-before-bed kind of writer; his vision is more the fever dream after lights out.

This Storm , a baroque and playful masterwork , is repulsive and propulsive, obsessive and compulsive. The juvenile delinquent has become nothing less than a giant of American literature .

Epic crime writing from a master

Like Tolstoy, the American crime writer’s novels are big and bold affairs […] however, Ellroy is probably closer to Dostoevsky, whose work consistently exposed the darker side of human nature and the perpetual temptation between good and evil.

Historical crime doesn’t get more exciting than this.

Master thriller writer

JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid , The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover; and the L.A. Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia , The Big Nowhere , L.A. Confidential , and White Jazz . He is also the author of two other Freddy Otash novels, Widespread Panic and The Enchanters . He was awarded the 2022 Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Colorado.