They sent him to Dallas to kill a nigger pimp named Wendell Durfee. He wasn't sure he could do it. The Casino Operators Council flew him. They supplied first-class fare. They tapped their slush fund. They greased him. They fed him six cold.

The L.A. Quartet

Underworld USA Trilogy

My Dark Places

Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. These books will leave you reamed, steamed and drycleaned, tie-dyed, swept to the side, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed. These are books for the whole fuckin' family, if the name of your family is the Manson Family.

I thought Bush was a slimeball and the most disastrous American president in recent times. I voted for Obama. He's a lot like Jack Kennedy...they both have big ears and infectious smiles. But Obama is a deeper guy. Kennedy was an appetite guy. He wanted pussy, hamburgers, booze. Jack did a lot of dope.

L.A. Confidential, the movie, is the best thing that happened to me in my career that I had absolutely nothing to do with. It was a fluke...and a wonderful one...and it is never going to happen again...a movie of that quality.

Here’s my final comment on L.A. Confidential, the movie: I go to a video store in Prairie Village, Kansas. The youngsters who work there know me as the guy who wrote L.A. Confidential. They tell all the little old ladies who come in there to get their G-rated family flick. They come up to me, they say, “OOOO you wrote L.A. Confidential.... Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful movie. I saw it four times. You don’t see storytelling like that on the screen anymore.” I smile, I say, “Yes, it’s a wonderful movie, and a salutary adaptation of my wonderful novel. But listen, granny: You love the movie. Did you go out and buy the book?” And granny invariably says, “Well, no, I didn’t.” And I say to granny, “Then what the fuck good are you to me?”

• Brown's Requiem (1981)
• Clandestine (1982)
• Killer on the Road (originally published as Silent Terror) (1986)

Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy

• Blood on the Moon (1984)
• Because the Night (1984)
• Suicide Hill (1985)
• L.A. Noir (omnibus edition) (1998)

L.A. Quartet

• The Black Dahlia (1987)
• The Big Nowhere (1988)
• L.A. Confidential (1990)
• White Jazz (1992)

Underworld USA Trilogy

• American Tabloid (1995)
• The Cold Six Thousand (2001)
• Blood's a Rover (2009)

Short stories and essays

• Dick Contino's Blues (issue number 46 of Granta magazine, Winter 1994)
• Hollywood Nocturnes (1994; UK title: Dick Contino's Blues and Other Stories)
• Crime Wave (1999)
• Morgue! (2004)

Autobiography

• My Dark Places (1996)
• My Pursuit of Women (2010)

Guest editor

• The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 (2002)

• 1993 James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction
• 2001 James Ellroy's Feast of Death
• 2006 Murder By The Book: James Ellroy
• 2010 Ellroy appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, talking about his life and influences.

• 1988 Cop
• 1997 L.A. Confidential
• 1998 Brown's Requiem
• 2002 Stay Clean
• 2002 Dark Blue
• 2006 The Black Dahlia
• 2008 Street Kings
• 2008 Land of the Living
• 2009 White Jazz

• 1992 "Since I Don't Have You" adapted by Steven A. Katz for Showtime's Fallen Angels.