Welcome to Ellroy's World. It's just like the world you know, only different - all of the same events, but with different causes, rooted in the bad decisions of bad men wallowing in a morass of violence and corruption. It's the alternate universe created by Neo-Noir madman James Ellroy, and it will twist your mind.
Ellroy's work is probably familiar to most through the movie adaptation of his L.A. Confidential, which simplified his novel considerably, while still managing to capture its essential spirit. But that book was merely the third part of a quartet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L. A. Confidential, and White Jazz - all of which feature ambivalent anti-heroes trying to find some kind of salvation in a city so corrupt it makes Sodom look like Branson, Missouri.
