My Dark Places: A True Crime Autobiography

By James Ellroy

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy presents another literary masterpiece, this time a true crime murder mystery about his own mother.

In 1958 Jean Ellroy was murdered, her body dumped on a roadway in a seedy L.A. suburb.  Her killer was never found, and the police dismissed her as a casualty of a cheap Saturday night. James Ellroy was ten when his mother died, and he spent the next thirty-six years running from her ghost and attempting to exorcize it through crime fiction. In 1994, Ellroy quit running.  He went back to L.A., to find out the truth about his mother--and himself.  

In My Dark Places, our most uncompromising crime writer tells what happened when he teamed up with a brilliant homicide cop to investigate a murder that everyone else had forgotten--and reclaim the mother he had despised, desired, but never dared to love. What ensues is a epic of loss, fixation, and redemption, a memoir that is also a history of the American way of violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307488510

Reviews for My Dark Places

[quickpint · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A driven, ambitious, talented and successful crime author cashes in on his mother's murder. Does he get away with it? Not quite. The clue is in the final sentence of the book's final chapter. Nevertheless, a fascinating and unique literary failure. "Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively," writes Ellroy. One wonders if this is either fair or true, altough I have thought the same thing myself. Also interesting in My Dark Place is Ellroy's off-hand dismissal of his earlier novels.

[george_stokoe-600529 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was thinking about writing a review of this book, when by coincidence I saw a claim made on social media. It was that those labelled "far right extremists" have in fact many positive attributes, one of which is "aversion to drugs, alcohol and pornography."

The book was half a century ago, but if things haven't changed too much, it gives lie to the claim, as far as one person is concerned, anyway.

Ellroy's book is part autobiography, part investigation into his mother's murder. It's interesting for his account of his early life as a burglar, drug addict, listener to right—wing radio shows, and what these days might be called an edgelord:

"The early '60s were good comic fodder. I took contrary stands on the A-bomb, John Kennedy, civil rights and the Berlin Wall brouhaha. I yelled' Free Rudolph Hess! ' and advocated the reinstalment of slavery.
... I invited a few kids to my pad- and watched them recoil at the stench of dogshit. I tried to conform to their standards of normal behaviour and betrayed myself with foul language, poor hygiene and expressed admiration for George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. "(pp. 119-121)

As it turned out, Ellroy got himself together, cleaned up his lifestyle, and became a successful novelist. From the book it seems two things helped him. Firstly, religion, and secondly, a structured abstinence programme/meetings:

"I knew that booze, drugs, and my tenuous abstention from them caused my brain burnout. My rational side told me that. My secondary response derived straight from guilt. God punished me for mentally fucking my mother.
... My lung abscess healed completely. I checked out of the hospital and cut a deal with God.
I told him I wouldn't drink or pop inhalers. I told him I wouldn't steal. All I wanted was my mind back for keeps.
The deal jelled. "
(pp. 160-161)

" I was hungry. I wanted love and sex. I wanted to give my mental stories to the world.
... Lloyd cleaned up in AA. He told me total abstinence was better than booze and dope at its best. I believed him. He was always smarter and stronger and more resourceful than me.
I followed his lead. I said "Fuck it" and shrugged off my old life. "
-p. 164

Early parts of the book make for an unusual crime memoir. There's none of the usual self-aggrandising gangster bullshit of the genre. Instead, in jail:
"I hung out with stupid white guys, stupid black guys and stupid Mexican guys - and swapped stupid stories with them. We had all committed daring crimes and fucked the world's most glamorous women. An old black wino told me he fucked Marilyn Monroe. I said, "No shit-I fucked her too!"
(p. 154)

Even without the murder it's a sad story.
" My mother was drinking more. She'd crank highballs at night and get pissed off, maudlin or effusive. I found her in bed with men a couple of times. The guys had that '50s lounge-lizard look. They probably sold used cars or repossessed them.
... My parents were unable to talk in a civil fashion. They did not exchange words under any circumstances. Their expressions of hatred were reserved for me: He's a weakling; she's a drunk and a whore. I believed him - and wrote her accusations off as hogwash. I was blind to the fact that her accusations carried a greater basis in truth. "
-p. 95

[paulh_81849 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The library just got a new copy of this in and I am enjoying reading it again. It's still just as dark, creepy and captivating. This biography helps explain Ellroy's compulsion to write LA Confidential, White Jazz etc., as a form of exorcism.

[berthirsch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This memoir written by the novelist James Ellroy who wrote LA CONFIDENTIAL and other crime fiction. This is the true story of his own childhood focusing on his mother's unsolved murder and his search many years later for the true culprit. He employs the original detective in searching out the truth in his own personal cold case file.This reads like fiction and is a most haunting tale written in a brutally honest fashion by Mr. Ellroy.