The movie Janet Maslin of the New York Times calls: "Gangbusters! A shrewd, elegant film with a flawless ensemble cast and style to burn"; L.A. Confidential is an epic crime novel that stands as a steel-edged time capsule-Los Angeles in the 1950s, a remarkable era defined in dark shadings. A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law-three cops treading quicksand in the middle. Detective Ed Exley wants glory. Haunted by his father's success as a policeman, he will pay any price, break any law to eclipse him. Detective Bud White watched his own father murder his mother-he is now bent on random vengeance, a time bomb with a badge. Celebrity cop Jack Vincennes shakes down movie stars for a scandal magazine. An old secret possesses him-he'll do anything to keep it buried. Three cops in a spiral, a nightmare that tests loyalty and courage, a nightmare that offers no mercy, allows for no survivors. Here is James Ellroy's masterpiece… darkness to haunt you in shades of red, gray, and black

Los Angeles is gripped by the exploding celebrity of Allison Murietta, her real identity unknown, a modern-day Jesse James with the compulsion to steal beautiful things, the vanity to invite the media along, and the conscience to donate much of her bounty to charity. Nobody ever gets hurt-until a job ends with ten gangsters lying dead and a half- million dollars worth of glittering diamonds missing. Rookie Deputy Charlie Hood discovers the bodies, and he prevents an eyewitness-a schoolteacher named Suzanne Jones-from leaving the scene in her Corvette. Drawn to a mysterious charisma that has him off-balance from the beginning, Hood begins an intense affair with Suzanne. As the media frenzy surrounding Allison's exploits swells to a fever pitch and the Southland's most notorious killer sets out after her, a glimmer of recognition blooms in Hood, forcing him to choose between a deeply held sense of honor and a passion that threatens to consume him completely. With a stone-cold killer locked in relentless pursuit, Suzanne and Hood continue their desperate dance around the secrets that brought them together, unsure whether each new dawn may signal the day their lies catch up with them

Amazon.com Review Stuart Woods is a master of the glitzy, high-concept, suspense thriller, and Stone Barrington, hero of five previous mysteries, is the kind of private cop who glides gracefully between lavishly detailed dinners, private jets, fancy parties, sexy assignations in luxury hotels, and the occasional murder investigation. Occasionally he gets his hands dirty, but more often it's his sheets. L.A. Dead finds him in Venice, where he's about to marry the beautiful (but seriously crazy) daughter of a high-ranking Mafioso, whose other daughter happens to be married to Stone's best friend-an NYPD cop, naturally. The civil ceremony's over, but the church wedding is only hours away when Stone is called to L.A., where his former lover has just discovered her husband's dead body. The lover is Arrington (an oddity, given Stone's surname; did Woods just run out of imagination here?), the dead husband is a famous movie star, and everyone believes she killed him. Everyone except Stone, who's still in love with Arrington. He has a helluva time interviewing (and bedding) all the women in her circle, including the dead husband's private secretary, Arrington's best friend, her lawyer's mistress, and a number of Hollywood wives. Jackie Collins does the ladies better, but Stone manages to save the damsel in distress, get rid of his nutty near-wife without offending her father, and wrap up all the details except the most important one. No doubt he's saving that for the next book. In the meantime, Woods's many fans will snap this up and spend the interim wondering: if Stone marries the woman of his dreams, will that make her Arrington Barrington?

Macmillan Readers Starter Level

Just how far does the “observer effect” go?

Rockstar Games has partnered with Mulholland Books to publish a collection of short fiction expanding the world of the newest groundbreaking achievement in storytelling: the interactive crime thriller L.A. Noire. 1940s Hollywood, murder, deception and mystery take center stage as readers reintroduce themselves to characters seen in L.A. Noire. Explore the lives of actresses desperate for the Hollywood spotlight; heroes turned defeated men; and classic Noir villains. Readers will come across not only familiar faces, but familiar cases from the game that take on a new spin to tell the tales of emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and their ill-fated victims. With original short fiction by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories breathes new life into a time-honored American tradition, in an exciting anthology that will appeal to fans of suspense and gamers everywhere