James Ellroy

Webb's hardboiled schtick must've been a crucial influence on Ellroy's style. Joe Friday always gets the last word!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5iFVfwMnG4

he talks about webb all the time - he cites webb's book The Badge (which is like an "uncut" version of various cleaned-up dragnet cases, including the black dahlia) as a major influence on him. also goes out of his way to mock webb as a cop-groupie in perfidia and elsewhere, and considering ellroy's overall respect for cops - despite how often he paints police of bygone eras as varying degrees of corrupt - that's saying a lot.

have to say i thought the dudley/bette davis thing was kind of silly but oh well.

I haven't read perfidia (or any of the la quartet apart from the big nowhere) but I'm going to hear ellroy talk about it on tues, will report back

Started reading the first Lloyd Hopkins book, f

Oops

Forget the title. Some of the prose is a lil clunkier than the others I've read of his but it's vivid as Hell & kinda nauseating in places

About halfway through Perfidia. I really think it's a terrible book. Loved the first LA Quartet; wasn't madly keen on the Underworld USA trilogy, though I thought Blood's a Rover was markedly better than the two that preceded it. But this is awful, a big saggy mess. His prose, more than ever, has descended into self parody, so much so that the characters have become indistinguishable from each other – they all talk the same, think the same, act the same, regardless of race or sex.

The only thing that's stopping me putting it aside is the flow of stories about the child sex rings involving The Great and the Good in 70s/80s London, which serve as a reminder that Ellroy's imaginings about what people use power for might be closer to the truth that one might wish.