Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American
crime fiction writer and
essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic
prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short,
staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels
The Black Dahlia (1987),
The Big Nowhere (1988),
L.A. Confidential (1990),
White Jazz (1992),
American Tabloid (1995),
The Cold Six Thousand (2001), and
Blood's a Rover (2009).