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Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
James Ellroy: ‘I have been obsessed with crime since my mother's murder'
James Ellroy is prowling a tiny hat shop in a side street in Seville, Spain. His angular 6ft 3in frame, loud bark and garish Hawaiian shirt draw attention. Everyone watches as he reaches for a khaki green cashmere fedora and tries it on. 'Does it look big?' he drawls, squinting at himself in a mirror. 'Shake your head and see if it moves,' I suggest. He waggles his head: the hat fits but he is still not sure. 'It does not vibrate my vindaloo,' he bellows. 'Let's broom on outta here.' Ellroy, 77, has been vibrating the vindaloo of millions of crime fiction readers for decades, and he is part of his own myth-generating machine. 'I am the greatest popular novelist that America has ever produced,' he declares. 'The author of 24 books, masterpieces all, which precede all my future masterpieces.' He repeats variations of this self-praise multiple times during the week I spend with him in Spain, where he has come to speak at a literary festival. When I ask how he feels about the author Joyce Carol Oates describing him as the American Dostoyevsky, he snorts derisively: 'Dostoyevsky is the Russian Ellroy.' His densely plotted novels, which include 1995's American Tabloid and 2023's The Enchanters, focus on the criminal underbelly of postwar America, especially Los Angeles, and have sold millions of copies. Several, including The Black Dahlia (1987) and most notably LA Confidential (1990), have been adapted into movies. His writing style is a sort of staccato cop rap from a bygone era, sometimes echoed in his own speech. And he has a truly shocking origin story for a crime writer: when he was ten years old his mother was murdered, her body found in shrubs beside a California high school with one of her stockings tied around her neck. 'I have been obsessed with crime since the hot Sunday afternoon of June 22, 1958, when a policeman named Ward Hallinen squatted down to my little kid level and said, 'Son, your mother has been killed,' ' he says. • James Ellroy calls LA Confidential film 'a 'turkey of the highest form' Ellroy's own life inspires much of his work, which often blurs fact and fiction. At times it seems as though he has walked out of one of his novels. And it's no wonder he wants a convincing hat to wear: the Hat Squad in his books, as any self-respecting Ellroy fan will tell you, comprises four inseparable fedora-wearing robbery detectives who are based on real LAPD officers, known for their tough veneer and compassionate hearts. Which sums up Ellroy too. Despite the braggadocio, he is not insufferable — he veers between extreme self-confidence and a touching unworldliness. 'The world bewilders me,' he says in a moment of self-doubt when we are trying to find our seats on a busy high-speed train to Madrid. He cannot stand crowded places. 'I am only comfortable around a few people.' However, when I interview Ellroy in front of an audience at the Hay Festival Forum in Seville he is more than comfortable, bounding on to the stage and roaring like a lion. Literally. The audience is aghast. 'Good evening, peepers, prowlers, pederasts, pedants, panty sniffers, punks and pimps,' he snarls in full performance mode. 'I'm James Ellroy, the death dog with the hog log, the foul owl with the death growl and the slick trick with the donkey dick…' On stage it is all swagger and stonewalling. 'I have no view on Donald Trump,' he declares when I ask for his take on the American president. He adds primly: 'I rigorously abstain from moral judgment on the current times.' Yet away from the crowd, one on one, he is much more candid. 'If you want to stray to Trump, I realised very early on that he was, at the very least, a career criminal, mobbed up and very probably a serial sexual harasser. So that should exclude him from the presidency. My cop friends like Trump because Americans have a tough-guy complex. They don't realise how weak and craven he is,' he says. Lee Earle Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948, the only child of 'a great-looking, cheap couple'. His mother, Jean Hilliker, was a nurse and his father, Armand Ellroy, an accountant and, as Ellroy describes him, 'a Hollywood bottom-feeder'. He had no idea how to parent. 'He once said to me, 'Hey kid, I f***ed Rita Hayworth.' I said, 'F*** you, Dad, you did not f*** Rita Hayworth.' Ten years after his death a man who was writing her biography looked me up — my father was her business manager. Did they ever have sexual congress? I'd like to believe they did but my father was a notorious bullshit artist.' Ellroy's parents split up when he was five, and he later moved with his mother to El Monte, just outside LA, spending weekends with his father. Both parents were promiscuous. 'I realised there was a secret adult world out there and that sex is at the heart of it. I saw my mother in bed with men. And later on I came home and found my dad in bed with my sixth-grade teacher. I heard the grunting and groaning as I walked up the steps. What was funny was the dog was trying to take a nap on the bed while all those legs were kicking around.' With the encouragement of his father he grew to hate his mother. When he told her he would prefer to live with his dad, she slapped him. 'I fell and whacked my head on a glass coffee table. She didn't hit me again. She was nothing but solicitous [But] from that point on it was over. It was him and me against her. She was the bad guy.' His mother was murdered on the night of Saturday, June 21, 1958, while Ellroy was staying with his father. Sixty-seven years on, the murder remains unsolved. Only Ellroy could make it even more shocking by saying he was grateful to the killer. 'What I recall most prevalently is forcing myself to cry on the bus going back to LA,' he says. 'I cranked the tears out. I remember waking up the next morning, looking out at a bright blue sky and thinking I had a whole new life. This is not a retrospective,' he insists. 'I'm not concocting this.' In fact his feelings towards his mother are more complex. 'I admired her tremendously. She was capable and competent in a way my father was not.' In his 1996 memoir My Dark Places he admits to having had sexual thoughts about her both before and after her death. Many years later he spent 15 months and a lot of money trying to solve her murder with Bill Stoner, a retired homicide detective. Stoner later said he thought Ellroy was 'falling in love with his mother'. Not quite, Ellroy says today, but 'I am of her'. Living with his permissive father was not all he had hoped it might be. The apartment was filthy and meals were erratic. It was a 'horrible, horrible childhood', he says, but he cautions against pity. 'I'm not some crack baby butt-f***ed in his crib by his Uncle Charlie.' A voracious reader, he gravitated towards crime books after his mother's murder. He was expelled from school for fighting and truancy as a teenager, then stayed at home to care for his father, who had suffered a stroke. Eventually he could stand it no more and in 1965 he briefly joined the army to escape — something for which he has never quite forgiven himself. 'I used to dream about the abandonment of my father when he was dying,' he says. He returned from the army just before his father's death later that year. 'His final words to me were, 'Try to pick up every waitress who serves you.' ' Ellroy — who adopted the name James because he hated the 'tongue-tripping l's and e's' of Lee Earle Ellroy — hit a precarious decade. Often homeless, he would sleep in parks, could not hold down a job and sank into alcoholism. He was arrested multiple times: 'I used to shoplift. I used to break into houses and sniff women's undergarments, I stole a few cars — Mickey Mouse misdemeanours. I probably got arrested forty times but [on] aggregate I served no more than four or five months of county jail time.' His determination to write lifted him out of this spiral. In 1977 he took a job as a golf caddie at the Bel-Air Country Club outside LA and started his first novel, Brown's Requiem, about a caddy who hires a detective to spy on his sister. Murder and mayhem ensue, interwoven with a love story. 'All my books are love stories set against violent backdrops,' he says. 'If there are two great themes in my books it's history as a state of yearning and bad men in love with strong women.' His most recent book, The Enchanters, published in 2023, features a real-life Hollywood private eye, Freddy Otash, spying on Marilyn Monroe to get dirt on the Kennedys. Describing Monroe as 'talentless and usurious', Ellroy conjures a murky world of corrupt politicians and craven stars and looks on with his readers, enthralled and titillated, as they tear each other apart. 'Absolute factual reality means nothing to me,' he stresses. 'What I do is I slander the dead.' • The Enchanters by James Ellroy review — he's a one-off The police in his novels are often as corrupt as the criminals. 'I love the cops. It started when a policeman put a nickel in a vending machine and handed me a candy bar the afternoon [after] my mother was killed. He gave me a little pat on the head and I have given my heart to cops ever since. I don't care what kind of outré illegal shit they pull, I take gleeful joy in describing police misconduct. Rogue cops are my guys.' Would he ever have contemplated becoming a cop himself? 'Naaah,' he growls. What about a criminal? Has he ever fantasised about murdering someone? He narrows his eyes and for a moment I wonder if I have overstepped the mark. But his face softens into a smile: 'No, I never have.' Ellroy has been married and divorced twice — first to Mary Doherty, a phone company executive, from 1988 to 1991. These days he lives in Denver with his second ex-wife, the Canadian author Helen Knode, whom he met in 1990 when his marriage to Doherty was crumbling. 'She's the single most brilliant human being I've ever met,' he says of Knode. They married in October 1991, but their relationship became tumultuous: Ellroy was tackling addiction and mental health problems. They now live in the same building but in different apartments. 'I have a key to hers, she has a key to mine. It's not monogamy that's the problem, it's cohabitation. We can fight a fight. She gets shrill real quick. Helen would believe she is remarkably more open-minded than me. I would say I'm remarkably more open-minded than her… Tell her I said that. She will bray like a horse.' A few days later I speak to Knode on the phone. She splutters indignantly when I tell her what Ellroy said. How does she put up with him? 'It's breathtakingly exhausting to be him and to be around him,' she says affectionately. 'There are several James Ellroys and they all cohabit sometimes.' He has never had children, saying in the past he feared he would be a 'bad father'. 'I have absolutely no feeling for families,' he tells me. He and Knode experimented with an open marriage but by 2005 they had agreed to split. 'It was the best day of my life when I realised I could divorce him,' Knode says with a laugh. Ellroy then had a series of relationships with, as Knode puts it, 'parasitical women' — but they remained close. During his last relationship, more than a decade ago, his girlfriend complained about the amount of time he spent talking to Knode on the phone. 'She said, 'Her or me?' I said, 'Her.' We've been together ever since,' Ellroy says. They usually spend the late afternoon together at Knode's apartment, have 'dinch' (lunch/dinner) and watch a documentary or an old movie. 'I've had to put my foot down,' she says. 'I told him we're not watching any movies with guns.' 'Then we say goodnight,' Ellroy says, 'and I go back to my apartment. I have insomnia, so I'm padding around.' Ellroy's flat is austere with grey walls, overlooking a railway track. 'It's reassuring. Trains going by at two and three o'clock in the morning.' The bookshelves are filled with copies of his own books. He rarely goes out. 'Helen has friends, I don't. I actually have panic attacks if Helen stays out too late.' He spends most of the day at home, writing and listening to classical music, especially Beethoven. 'I write by hand, I've never logged on to a computer. I believe the internet, computers, cell phones, apps, electronic devices are the most pernicious version of Satan on earth. Get a gun and shoot your computer through its evil digital heart. In its guise of convenience it has destroyed civility and turned younger people into uncivil, brusque, rude, low-attention-span, shithead kids and we have to rescue future generations from this evil.' He will never write a novel set in the present — or even in the last half century: 'In 1972 Watergate eats up the political scenery. There's no place to go after that.' He knows his political history but very little about the world today. He admired Margaret Thatcher as 'the saviour of Britain' (he even named a dog after her), but when I ask what he thinks of Keir Starmer, he replies, 'Who?' Ellroy has almost finished writing his next novel, set in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis but spanning back to include the bombing of Guernica. He has never seen Picasso's Guernica painting of 1937, so we arrange to meet one afternoon at the Reina Sofia art museum in Madrid. He stands silently in front of the huge monochrome oil painting for a full ten minutes, scanning every detail, before making the sign of the cross. 'It's horrifying,' he says quietly. In the next room, though, he is back in ebullient mode. Catching sight of Salvador Dalí's 1929 painting The Great Masturbator, he chuckles. 'Wanker!' he says loudly. There is something restless about Ellroy, both physically — loping around, fidgeting — and in spirit. 'I want to get lost,' he says repeatedly. 'I gotta get outside of myself. I wrestle with it all the time.' What does he mean? 'I'm always thinking. I can't sleep for shit. I just want to go to a place where nobody knows me and have one double Manhattan, or eat a marijuana cookie, and just see what happens.' But he won't let himself. He has been teetotal for years and during his sleepless nights he worries about everything, death above all. 'Horror of death is the tremor that lies beneath everything. And 77 will get you there.' He has thought carefully about how he would like to be buried. 'I want to have my briefcase and my three stuffed alligators.' He's not joking — but they are fluffy toys rather than taxidermy. 'Sometimes I'll put the gators under the covers with me, they're a family. Al is the alligator, of course. Wife is named Clara and they have a daughter named Gertie. They're going in the hole with me.' Not that he is winding down. 'I'm not checking out of here any time soon.' Indeed he often says that he will live until he's 101. 'I've got a lot of books left in me. I'm going to have a strong third act. Not to labour a point, but I am a genius.' Hay Festival Segovia runs Sep 11-14 and Hay Forum Seville Feb 11-14, 2026;
Fox News
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Former Playboy model Holly Madison blasts Hollywood as dark place teeming with ‘leeches'
Holly Madison, a former Playboy model and one of Hugh Hefner's longtime girlfriends, left the Playboy Mansion in 2008. After telling her story over the years, she's certain about one thing – Hollywood can be an evil place. "There's definitely a dark underbelly," the 45-year-old told Fox News Digital. "There's kind of an energy in Hollywood that I felt ever since I moved here. There's this energy of when you're that young woman who steps off the bus from the Midwest or wherever you're from. "There are leeches looking to take advantage of and destroy you and use you everywhere," the mother of two added. "And I'm not just talking about rich, powerful people. I'm talking about pimps on the street. I'm talking about people trying to bait and switch and get girls involved in sex trafficking. … It's really everywhere here. I saw it firsthand when I moved here at 19." On Monday, Madison is kicking off season 3 of Investigation Discovery's (ID) true crime series, "The Playboy Murders," which explores high-profile tragedies and crimes associated with the iconic magazine brand. Looking back, Madison said she felt Hollywood's darkness "right away." WATCH: FORMER PLAYBOY MODEL DETAILS THE 'DARK UNDERBELLY' OF HOLLYWOOD "It's almost ironic because I felt like Playboy, when I moved into the mansion, felt kind of safe in a way, even though there were all these things going on that I hated and didn't like," said Madison. "It felt like almost the sanitized corporate version of sexuality. But it felt a lot safer to me to be living in this big, guarded house than to be out driving around in my car that's ready to break down, struggling to make ends meet and people approaching you on the street." "I thought I was going to end up like the Black Dahlia or something," Madison remarked, referring to one of LA's most notorious murder cases. "I thought Playboy was my safe haven." Madison was 21 when she moved into the Playboy Mansion. She made her exit at age 29 after wrapping "The Girls Next Door," a reality TV series about Hefner's multiple girlfriends. In 2016, she wrote a memoir, "Down the Rabbit Hole," alleging years of verbal and emotional abuse. Looking back at her experience, Madison would advise any hopeful model making her way to Hollywood for a big break to "keep your circle of friends" close. "Hopefully, they can give you some level-headed advice or let you know if something seems to be getting a little out of control," she advised. "And do your research. [Dive] in on the downsides of every different industry." "I remember being 18 and 19 and thinking I was such a badass and that I could just take on the world and that I could have sex like a man and have no emotional attachment," she reflected. "But it's really not like that. Doing things like that carries a lot of emotional weight. I think looking into people's stories who are honest about all the sides of the industry is a really good thing to do. And look at some of the cautionary tales before you just dive in." Madison never crossed paths with Kimberly Fattorini, a Playboy casting associate and part-time model. Fattorini's 2017 death is the subject of the season's first episode. "The story came to my attention because several of her friends were messaging me on Instagram after season 2 of 'The Playboy Murders' aired, and they're like, 'Can you please cover Kimmy's story?'" said Madison. "Everything about her story just looks so familiar to me. … It was really scary to me because I feel like I've been in many situations where you're just out with friends, and there are guys who don't have people's best interests in mind." According to the episode, Fattorini died from ingesting a lethal cocktail of alcohol, cocaine and the date rape drug gamma hydroxybutyrate, or "GHB." She was 30 years old. According to the episode, a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Fattorini's parents against former NFL linebacker Shawne Merriman, promoter Eli Wehbe and model Monica Maass is pending. It noted that Merriman, Wehbe and Maass declined to discuss Fattorini's death for the series. They've previously denied accusations that were connected to Fattorini's death. "[It was] determined there wasn't enough evidence for a criminal trial, but there are text messages that seem to indicate she knew somebody had drugged her drink," said Madison. "It seemed like there was a lot of negligence and people around her who should have helped her and didn't. "It's just a really scary feeling to look at a case like this and feel like this could have been me or one of my friends when we were out partying and just having fun, [being] normal young people," she said. "I hope her family can get some answers and closure on that." When asked if Playboy should have stepped in at the time and pushed for answers, Madison admitted it was complicated. "Playboy was such a huge company with so many people working for it," she explained. "That's why we've been able to find three seasons' worth of cases. There were Playboy Clubs all over the country with so many women working as Bunnies. I think it's impossible for one company to really … babysit the lives of everybody who's ever worked for them, especially if something happened while the person wasn't on the job. "I don't think it's so much Playboy's responsibility, but somebody needs to be held accountable for sure," she added. Madison noted that when you're part of a "high-stakes environment," there are plenty of risks to face. That's why it's crucial, she said, for aspiring models to keep a close circle of friends who aren't from Hollywood. "You're going into Playboy and there's so much potentially to be gained," she said. "There's fame, there's money, there's opportunities. And when you are the person who gets those opportunities, there can be a lot of jealousy, a lot of possessiveness. It's living life in the fast lane. "When you're doing that, more extreme things can happen," she said. "Even though a lot of people can have a positive experience in that setting, a lot of crazy things can happen too." Today, Madison calls Las Vegas home. She has credited the series with helping her connect with other women from her Playboy past who've faced their own struggles in Hollywood. "It was healing to share my story," she said. "I felt like when I [went] out, just based on the TV show that I was on, people thought I had this magical relationship, and they expected only positive things. I would only say positive things at first, just because I thought it was the nice thing to do. But it started to feel like I was living a lie. "So just getting that off my chest and being able to be truthful about my experience is so healing for me. … To see other people who went through similar things as me, to be able to feel empowered enough to come out and tell the truth. … It feels good." "The Playboy Murders" airs Mondays at 9 p.m.
New York Times
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
8 Great Noir Thrillers
Some people use noir to mean a spare writing style; others, a type of plot that tends toward deceit and despair. But it's maybe best described as a place where no one wants to end up, literally or metaphorically. It's probably my favorite genre. I first got into noir through my father's Black Lizard Press paperbacks. My father was not a criminally-minded man, but he gave me what every writer needs: good taste and a difficult childhood. Miss you, Dad. These books will thrill you enough that you ought not to start them before bedtime — you won't want to stop. But don't look for happy endings here, or inspiration, unless you, too, want to be a be a writer whose work leaves people shellshocked. The Black Dahlia This sprawling masterpiece about two Los Angeles police officers and the desires that drive and bind them was inspired by the real Black Dahlia: Elizabeth Short, found murdered and mutilated in Leimert Park in 1947, nicknamed for the floral tattoo on her thigh. The case has never been solved, and there are a few books out there by people who think their own father was the killer. Ellroy's father is in the clear, but his mother, Jean Hilliker, was murdered in 1958, and the two unsolved cases are forever linked in Ellroy's psyche. His gloriously excessive style brings his fantasy of midcentury Los Angeles to brilliant, glittering, hyper-violent life, and his personal obsession with the Black Dahlia case shines through on every page. Miami Purity In 1995, Vicki Hendricks reinvigorated the genre with her humid, heated, gender-swapped take on 'The Postman Always Rings Twice.' Sherri Parlay, a good woman with a high libido, is seduced into murder by the beguiling heir to a dry-cleaning fortune. Soon, she finds that there's more to him than his good looks and sexual skills. After 30 years, no one has topped Hendricks's take on female lust, and she remains the queen of Florida crime writers, with an understanding of the social ecosystem like no one else. Parishioner Xavier Rule has a violent past, but he doesn't want that to be his future. Where to turn except a church made up of people who are even worse than he is, all of them trying to redeem themselves, and held to strict standards by their leader, Father Frank? When Frank asks Xavier to help another parishioner sort out her own sordid past, Xavier's faith will be tested. Mosley is fearless and as incisive as a scalpel in his examination of evil — personal, spiritual, and institutional — and surprisingly hopeful about the possibility of overcoming it. Creation Lake The cool, disdainful narrator of this literary thriller about an undercover agent among eco-activists and neo-primitivists is noir personified — and a character so strongly drawn you'll find yourself thinking in her voice. She needs nothing, has an opinion on everything (often a correct one), and a heart for no one. Fittingly, the book takes place among the French, who realized what we Americans had with our black-and-white crime narratives before we did. That's why we call it noir. Shella The darkest book on this list, 'Shella' shocks from the first page both for its content and its unbelievably spare, direct prose. Ghost, a killer for hire, searches for his lost love, a stripper who may have turned serial killer, in the darkest corners of the underworld. There's a tactile, pre-internet urban grit in this book that feels nostalgic and thrilling. Vachss excels at giving a real point of view and dimension to some of the most disturbing characters in modern fiction; you will be surprised to find yourself rooting for Ghost and Shella, and you'll miss them when you turn the last page. Gringos Portis, also the author of 'True Grit,' has a plain-spoken style that is perfect for this violent descent through Mexico's Yucatán; his flawless prose and eye for detail bring me back to this book over and over. American expat Jimmy Burns has made a life of sorts for himself in Mexico, although he isn't exactly embedded: 'Once again there had been no scramble among the hostesses of Mérida to see who could get me for Christmas dinner.' Alone and aimless, he looks for a lost friend among a sinister cult. The search will bring out his most brutal impulses — and a sliver of heroism. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Robert Syverten is a fresh-faced young man hoping to make it as a film director in Hollywood during the Depression — until he meets aspiring actress Gloria Beatty, one of the most grating, grueling and unforgettable characters ever set in ink. Hungry and broke, they join a dance marathon together. What could go wrong? The opposite of the Hollywood success story, this tale goes in one direction only — straight down — and announces its trajectory from the opening page. The Expat Michael Wang, the narrator of this slim espionage tale, lives in every crime writer's (or at least this writer's) dream location: a loft above a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown. By day he works for General Motors developing a self-driving car, so alienated from his peers that they hardly notice when he flies to China for a week. By night he freelances as a hacker and admires the expensive coffee maker and stereo he hopes will make him happy. Shi brings the noir thriller to the modern world of tech, weaving in corporate absurdity, Asian American identity and the ways families inadvertently recreate their failures. A note of hope almost disqualifies 'The Expat' from this list, but its brutally sharp style and downward trajectory firmly plant its flag.
New York Times
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Best Noir Thriller Books
Some people use noir to mean a spare writing style; others, a type of plot that tends toward deceit and despair. But it's maybe best described as a place where no one wants to end up, literally or metaphorically. It's probably my favorite genre. I first got into noir through my father's Black Lizard Press paperbacks. My father was not a criminally-minded man, but he gave me what every writer needs: good taste and a difficult childhood. Miss you, Dad. These books will thrill you enough that you ought not to start them before bedtime — you won't want to stop. But don't look for happy endings here, or inspiration, unless you, too, want to be a be a writer whose work leaves people shellshocked. This sprawling masterpiece about two Los Angeles police officers and the desires that drive and bind them was inspired by the real Black Dahlia: Elizabeth Short, found murdered and mutilated in Leimert Park in 1947, nicknamed for the floral tattoo on her thigh. The case has never been solved, and there are a few books out there by people who think their own father was the killer. Ellroy's father is in the clear, but his mother, Jean Hilliker, was murdered in 1958, and the two unsolved cases are forever linked in Ellroy's psyche. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
