Destination: Morgue - Softcover

The fragments of memoir, and three stories, which make up Ellroy's Destination Morgue share the same high-octane nervous jabber, the same noir world of amphetamines, neon and women brutally killed. Ellroy has never entirely got over the murder of his mother--he says so a lot, but that is no reason not to believe him--or a youth of bigotry and petty crime which made him rather more likely to end up a lifer than a best seller. If, at times, he is a bit too keen to tell us how street smart he is, he has nonetheless earned much of the right to do so; pieces here about a pornography obsession or dead killers he quasi-identified with have a scary honesty to them. It is shocking that a man is prepared to say such things about anyone, let alone about himself.

The novellas--collectively 'Rick Loves Donna'--anatomize the thoroughly and entertainingly unhealthy obsession across the decades of a corrupt cop for a starlet with a taste for involvement in vigilante violence. They are not quite vintage Ellroy--a little too close for that to Mickey Spillane on the one hand and the Simpson's 'Itchy and Scratchy' on the other--but they will do until his next dark mad masterpiece comes along.--Roz Kaveney

No manuscript was available for the latest collection of Ellroy's uncollected works. Everything's here you would expect from the man whose last book, The Cold Six Thousand, was described as a 'remarkable accomplishment'; sex, violence, true crime, scandal and a new novella called Hollywood Fuck Pad. However, Destination Morgue features a whole lot more than Ellroy's usual fare - pictures from low- rent paparazzi, including 'stretch marks revealed', 'gaping flies outside whorehouses' and 'toilet-stall assignations'. Expect darkness, depth, intensity and lots of comment from an author generally and critically acknowledged as one of America's greatest living crime writers, a claim backed by impressive sales figures for American Tabloid - 40,000 in hardback (a fivefold increase) and 75,000 in paperback. If you're not familiar with Ellroy, that's an omission you should remedy.