THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BRITT RENO
LENGTH: 77 lines
ON JUNE 23, 1958, an attractive redhead in her 40s turned up dead in El Monte, Calif. That woman was James Ellroy's mother. Ellroy was only 10 at the time.
His mother's death defined his life. The boy grew up obsessed with murder, a voyeur and thief addicted to drugs. Today, Ellroy is a best-selling author of a dozen hard-boiled crime novels. His latest autobiographical book, ``My Dark Places,'' deals with the loss of his mother, the devastation of murder and the birth of a creative mind.
The book, divided into four distinct parts, begins with an account of the murder investigation. Despite the closeness of the subject matter, Ellroy cannot easily shake his signature tough-guy talk. His promiscuous and hard-drinking mother is simply ``the redhead'' last seen with a ``blonde'' and a ``swarthy man.'' Ellroy himself is ``the kid.''
The description of the crime scene reads like a police report, detached and fact-driven. Bite-sized pieces keep us from registering the horror of the whole. She was found near a school, a stocking and a sash lashed tightly around her neck. Ellroy has drained all the emotion from the event. She is a statistic.
When Ellroy finally shifts to first-person narrative in part two and opens up his heart, we are shocked to discover that he feels no love for his mother. He did not know her; he did not know himself. His ``period of mourning lasted half an hour.''
His parents were divorced; and after his mother's death, his father, a struggling alcoholic, ``began to systematically poison (his) mind against (his) mother.'' Callously he supplied him with his first crime novels. Ellroy devoured them. He graduated from the Hardy Boys to Mickey Spillane. He learned about murder. It fueled his dark imagination and planted the seeds of the writer to be.
When Ellroy was 17, his father died, and Ellroy spun hopelessly out of control. In harsh, offensive language, Ellroy spews forth his 10-year descent to virtual ruin. It is impossible to imagine living this base existence. Just reading about it is exhausting and repugnant. But somehow he ``possessed a self-preserving streak at the height of (his) self-destruction.'' He was living in a dark, gritty noir crime world that would eventually spring forth from his mind as a fully formed novel, molded by loss and desperation.
Jump to the present. Enter Bill Stoner, retired homicide detective for the unsolved-crimes unit of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. To understand Stoner is to know the ghosts of the cases that still follow him. In part three, Ellroy details a litany of these homicides. It's a primer to murder. The cases are gripping, more engrossing than anything fiction could conjure. The writing is sharp and sassy. Ellroy is at his best drawing thumbnail sketches of lowlifes and their victims.
Ellroy enlists Stoner's help in part four on a re-investigation of his mother's murder 38 years ago. The odds are fully against them, but they scour the terrain, follow every lead and beat down every shred of evidence for 13 months. This is the reality of murder investigations. The tedium of detective work. Unfortunately, it makes for equally laborious reading. We experience Ellroy's frustration with every excruciating detail.
Although unevenly paced and crudely divided into quarters, ``My Dark Places'' is fascinating and moving for Ellroy's sheer survival. His is, I suppose, a success story. His early experiences fostered a creative mind. They turned him into a crime raconteur with a ``brain (like) a police blotter.'' But at what price?
His mother's ``death corrupted (his) imagination and gave (him) exploitable gifts.'' Here he rewraps these gifts and gives them back to her. He is finally able to tell the story he's been unable to tell. Their story. And in telling it he is honoring and grieving for his mother in his own way. MEMO: Britt Reno is a photographer and film editor who lives in
Alexandria, Va. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
BOOK REVIEW
``My Dark Places''
Author: James Ellroy
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf. 355 pp.
Price: $25