James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. After his parents divorced in 1954, his mother got custody, and they moved to the low-income area of El Monte. In 1958, his mother was murdered, and the killer was never found. The event left a heavy mark in Ellroy's psyche, and until his late twenties, his life consisted of alcohol and drug abuse, thievery, breaking and entering and other sorts of petty crime, including a persistent tendency to make his way to women's underwear drawers when breaking into their houses. However, in addition to chemical substances, he also consumed vast quantities of crime novels, and spent much of his time forming plots and narratives in his head. He sobered up in the late 70's and wrote his first novel, Brown's Requiem , which was published in 1981.

Nowadays Ellroy is probably best known for his LA Quartet -- The Black Dahlia (a blatant, yet well-executed attempt to tie his mother's murder to the famous LA murder case), The Big Nowhere , LA Confidential and White Jazz -- which paints a dark and violent picture of the pre-Miranda LAPD during the fifties. His other books include American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand .

Ellroy currently lives in Kansas City with his wife.