L.A. Confidential

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L.A. Confidential
First edition cover
Author	James Ellroy
Cover artist	Jacket design by Paul Gamarello Jacket illustration by Stephen Peringer
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	L.A. Quartet
Genre(s)	Novel, crime fiction
Publisher	The Mysterious Press
Publication date	June 1990
Media type	Print (hardcover & paperback) and audio cassette
Pages	496 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-89296-293-3 (first edition, hardcover)
OCLC Number	21041119
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Classification	PS3555.L6274 L18 1990
Preceded by	The Big Nowhere (1988)
Followed by	White Jazz (1992)

L.A. Confidential (1990) is neo-noir crime novel by James Ellroy, and the third of his L.A. Quartet series.

[edit] Plot

This section reads like a news release and needs to be rewritten.

The story is about Los Angeles policemen during the 1950s who are involved with a mixture of lies, sex, corruption, and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story eventually encompasses organized crime, political corruption, heroin, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism, institutional racism, plastic surgery, and Hollywood. The novel's title refers to the infamous 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, which was fictionalized as Hush-Hush magazine in the novel (although a tabloid magazine called Hush-Hush also existed during 1950s^[1]).

Jack Vincennes is a likable Hollywood police officer who works part-time as the technical adviser for Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-like television show. Vincennes is associated with Hush-Hush: He receives hefty payoffs for making orchestrated celebrity arrests, often involving narcotics, that will attract even more readers to the magazine—- and more fame to himself.

Edmund Exley, the son of a legendary LAPD police officer, is a very intelligent detective determined to outdo his father. His intelligence, his education, his glasses, his insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor all contribute to Ed's social isolation from other officers. He increases the resentment against him by testifying against police officers in a police brutality case (based on the Bloody Christmas incident) early in the novel. His determination to make a name for himself while at the same time fulfilling his own personal vendettas cause him to progress from a milquetoast to a killer.

Wendell "Bud" White, one of the most feared men of the LAPD, is a six-foot tall muscleman. His partner is convicted by Exley's testimony and expelled from the police force, and Bud vows revenge. He has a violent obsession against men who abuse women. He watched his own mother die by the hands of his father as a child. His temper often overpowers his thought.

At different intervals, the three men begin to investigate the Nite Owl case, which reveals corruption within their own precinct. In different ways, each of the three comes to find themselves by the way in which they come together to solve the crime.

[edit] Real life characters, influences, and events

• Bloody Christmas
• Dragnet
• Mickey Cohen
• Jack Dragna
• Johnny Stompanato
• Spade Cooley
• Howard Hughes
• William H. Parker
• Robert Harrison (publisher)
• Walt Disney (The fictional Confidential character, "Raymond Dieterling", bears striking similarities to Disney)
• Mickey Mouse (Called "Moochie Mouse" in Confidential.)
• Robert Mitchum (mentioned in film version)

[edit] Film adaptation

The book was adapted for a 1997 film of the same name, directed and cowritten by Curtis Hanson and starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn and Danny DeVito.

During 2003, the film was adapted into a pilot for a TV series, with Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Vincennes.^[2] The pilot did not do well, and the series was not televised.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ L.A. Confidential (2003) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database