Noches en Hollywood (Hollywood Nocturnes) Book

James Ellroy takes noir to a new level of darkness, his characters don't exist in shades of grey they exist in shades of charcoal, nearly all morally bankrupt ready to sell out their principles at a moments notice for a shot at a big score or a hot dame with big lungs.

This was my first experience of his short stories and I'm amazed at the different take on the format he has to most other short story collections I've experienced. For Ellroy the short story is an anecdote from a larger story, events that could slot in to one of his larger novels without trouble and in the form of the title story (and the introduction to it from Ellroy himself) an insight in to the working mind of the King of Sinnuendo.

The narrative of how Ellroy came to write Dick Contino's Blues should serve as inspiration for anyone stumbling around looking for ideas for their next story and by happy coincidence this is exactly what I was looking for when I decided to read this partiular collection of stories. There are a million books for aspiring writers and they nearly always talk about finding inspiration, I would put Ellroy's introduction right up their with the best of those chapters as a prime example of how to make coincidence and experience work for you.

The minor drawback in reading a short story from Ellroy is that he usually talks a lot of nonsense, the kind of thing you put up with because you know in his novels it's part of a wide-reaching narrative but in short story form you know it's not really going anywhere further than the 20 pages allotted to it.