My Dark Places

A True Crime Autobiography

By: James Ellroy

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

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.

Critic reviews

"Ellroy is more powerful than ever."
--The Nation

"Astonishing . . . original, daring, brilliant."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

Excellent

I love this book. I wish James had narrated it though, it would have been so much more moving. I did cry though.

Pretty good

The narrative and book itself was fairly good. However, I would just like to say that the narrator mispronounced forte as fort twice. I wonder if these seemingly innocent mispronunciations that happen in these audiobooks are secret jokes with the producers and narrators. Everyone knows how to pronounce forte, especially if speaking is your job.

Search for Mother after Murder

Elroy creates a rich ambience of Los Angeles from the late 50s through his departure to the East Coast. Gritty memoir and internal look at his mother‘s brutal murder.

Haughting. I did cry. A good cry.

This book opened up something I've never seen. Strangely great book. It feels like Mr. Ellroy caught me off guard. I highly recommend this book!

Narrator

I did not like the narrator’s voice or the way the book was read. Sorry Michael