There exist in these slim volumes archetypes that Ellroy would later expand upon, but nothing else in them suggests what was to come. They invariably feature a private eye or detective, a criminal, and the sort of case that could be boiled down to a single manila folder. Not counting the last of those titles – a serial killer story published pseudonymously, for which Ellroy has since shown little fondness – the early novels have narratives that run on single rails. The earlier novels – from Brown’s Requiem (1981) to Killer on the Road (1986) – are dry runs, tyro efforts, a slow walk to mastery.
While it is true that he published six novels prior to this noir masterwork, when we speak of Ellroy’s world – his voice, his style, his inimitability – we speak of something that formed and cooled on the day of that book’s publication.
The Black Dahlia (1987) was James Ellroy’s first novel.
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