Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of LA.

James Ellroy is a unique and powerful writer with a tough and explosive voice. His obsession with the dark side of LA is personal and vital, triggered by the murder of his mother when he was ten. This defining event spawned an early addiction to paperback crime novels, and Ellroy's own writing is saturated in an often violent underworld of bent cops, politicians, stars, sleaze and rumour.

Ellroy exploits memory, history, fact and fiction with relentless energy and panache. What emerges is an intense, mythical vision of Tinseltown in the second half of the twentieth century.

'Crime Wave' is a vivid portrait of James Ellroy's LA landscape. This special collection showcases his investigative non-fiction articles, previously published in the American edition of 'GQ', and also includes two new novellas, 'Hollywood Shakedown' and 'Tijuana Mon Amour'.