White Jazz (L.A. Quartet #4)

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer—a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.

Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins—all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time.

Klein tells his own story—his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing—taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive.

Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.

The toughest and most successful period crime novel yet by the bestselling author of L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. As commanding officer in the LAPD's Administrative Vice Division, David Klein thought he had seen it all. But this is 1958, and murder, bribery, scams, beatings and shakedowns are a way of life.

"The fourth novel in Elroy's acclaimed L.A. quartet, soon to be a major motion picture starring George Clooney.

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. But when the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, everything goes haywire. Klein is hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," which comes from all sides. His story takes listeners on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive. Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, WHITE JAZZ is crime fiction at its most shattering.

The fourth novel in Elroy's acclaimed L.A. quartet is the story of a corrupt LAPD officer who becomes trapped in the dark, seedy underworld he's helped to create.

Publishers Weekly

Blacker than noir, this latest novel from the author of L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia is set in 1958 and features a dirty LAPD detective with a breathtaking mastery of corruption. Dave Klein, a gangland heavy, USC law grad and police lieutenant, can thread a legal loophole as easily as he slips on brass knuckles. Assigned by the police commissioner to head an investigation into a narc squad payoff source, Klein smells a setup. To save himself, he traces a genealogy of double-dealing that includes incest, institutionalized bribery and police corruption, all going back decades. Ellroy's telegraphic style, which reduces masses of plot information to quick-study shorthand, captures the seamy stream-of-consciousness of this tainted cop and carries the reader from initial repulsion to a fascination that lingers long after the story's last notes have faded away. Ellroy adroitly transfers the manic energy of scat and bebop to this final volume of his tense, lowdown L.A. epic. Moreover, he demonstrates perfect pitch for illegalese, but the hepcat banter never obscures the complex plotting of politics and pre-Miranda rights police work, a combination that here makes most other crime novels seem naive. 40,000 first printing; BOMC alternate. (Sept.)

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz—were international bestsellers. American Tabloid was Time's Novel of the Year for 1995; his memoir My Dark Places was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996; his most recent novel, The Cold Six Thousand, was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year for 2001. He lives on the California coast.