Hollywood Nocturnes, James Ellroy’s latest detective-noir release,

serves as an excellent between-novel snack for fans awaiting the follow-up

to White Jazz.. This collection of six short stories and one novella

showcases Ellroy’s ability to create gritty, street-smart characters of

equal fault and virtue.

Few other writers offer such a ying and yang of human qualities in their

protagonists. Readers should expect no less from an author so candid about

his own criminal past.

Nocturnes begins with “Out of the Past,” a non-fictional history of

Ellroy’s infatuation and meeting with real-life accordian player Dick

Contino. The musician, a 1950s B-movie star, acts as a catalyst for Ellroy

to exorcise his own demons from that era. Ellroy’s mother was brutally

murdered at the same time as Contino’s brief and none-too-bright film

career took off. The chronology allows Ellroy to examine his lingering

childhood anxieties.

The novella, “Dick Contino’s Blues,” places the accordianist into the usual

seedy L.A. underworld of Ellroy’s longer works. Contino narrates his own

story, in the hipster slang of 1958. This sort of linguistic acrobatics is

Ellroy’s forte, honed to the succinctness of police-radio broadcasts in

White Jazz.. He relaxes his words here, perhaps to mimic the loose

feel of Contino’s music. Contino is scheduled to appear again as the

protagonist of Ellroy’s next full-length novel.

“High Darktown” and “Dial Axminster 6-400” are stories of the early career

of Los Angeles police officer Lee Blanchard, whose later life is chronicled

in Ellroy’s 1987 novel The Black Dahlia. Blanchard is as

good-natured as one of Ellroy’s cops can get. He mixes street smarts and

strong-arm tactics to track, apprehend and interrogate various criminals,

who are no less violent in return. In the first story, Blanchard tracks a

criminal who has vowed to kill him. In the second, he runs afowl of dirty

cops and opportunistic federal agents.

As proved in White Jazz, Ellroy is at his best when chronicling the

activities of crooked cops. In “Since I Don’t Have You,” cop-turned mob

muscleman Turner “Buzz” Meeks looks back on his earlier life: working for

both Howard Hughes and Mickey Cohen, two of Ellroy’s favorite true-life bad

boys. When they both send him looking for the same woman, Meeks plays

“both ends against the middle” in a classic Ellroy power play.

The framing method used in this short story and the novella echoes that of

Ellroy’s longer works. An aged cop/criminal recalls his glory days with

fondness, no matter how decadent or amoral. These themes hint at

self-examination when viewed against Ellroy’s childhood trauma. Rarely does

an author turn his personal demons into such rich, gutsy literature.