L.A. Confidential - James Ellroy

This isn't the usual mold for a crime novel. The structure is a dense crime report. The characters fit as if they were posing for mug shots. You get their most hard boiled image. Even for Ellroy this was an evolution. His early books are typical in structure with his usual tough punch. In L.A. Confidential he adapts the story to feel like it is home to the time period of the 1950s. The vernacular is so deft that there isn't just numerous expressions of common slang, but sentence structures that were common for the 50s. L.A. Confidential is encompassed by an authenticity all its own. He backs this wonderful language with a crime story that has ambition to devalue every other and with a story larger than five crime novels put together. White Jazz showed he could write in this style with a smaller focus, but L.A. Confidential is huge. In the movie the action takes place over a few days. In the book it takes place over about twenty years.