Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. A master of noir crime fiction, James has up close and personal knowledge of the world of crime. His life has been shadowed by a gruesome event: the unsolved murder of his mother when he was a child. Her killer was never apprehended.

Haunted by his mother's death, Ellroy served time in jail but, after a troubled thirty years of homelessness, alcoholism, drug abuse, petty crime, and a period of insanity, Ellroy eventually found steady work caddying at Los Angeles country clubs and joined AA.

In 1985 he began The Black Dahlia, a novel he dedicated to his mother. Four of his novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz are collectively known as the L.A. Quartet. His novels American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover form the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy.

American Tabloid and his memoir, My Dark Places, were both named as Time magazine's Best Book of the Year, respectively.