This is a brisk biography, written in short, snappy sentences of lean prose, reminiscent of James Ellroy’s own writing. We learned that following their acrimonious divorce, his father deliberately poisoned his son's mind against his mother-- parental alienation was unheard of at the time. Eventually Ellroy identified as the “Demon Dog” of American crime fiction, and even barked sometimes in public spaces! It’s honest and forthcoming in how Ellroy and his work are perceived and all the personal bits—and there are a lot of them—are wonderful.

We usually feel we have some understanding and just want to know the details of the life, knowing our understanding will deepen (or change). Informed by interviews with friends, family, peers, literary and Hollywood collaborators, and extensive conversations with Ellroy himself, Love Me Fierce in Danger pulls back the curtain on the life of an enigmatic figure who courts acclaim and controversy with equal zealotry.

But we also get everyone from Samuel Delany to Carrie Fisher, and even an indirect role for Janet Malcolm.

The early chapters, in fact, are the book’s strongest, and particularly when Powell investigates the young Ellroy’s relationship with his mother, Jean: “Years later, he candidly described his emotionally cold reaction to his mother’s murder: ‘I hated her. The crime went unsolved, and her death marked the start of a long and turbulent road for Ellroy that has included struggles with alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, and jail time. His racial politics are pretty suss and reading between the lines it seems fairly likely that Ellroy voted for Trump in 2016 (although later disavowed him). Also for fans of the mystery novel in general, or for those interested in the cultural history of California. Although Ellroy admired the fine women he romanced he was unable to honor his marriage vows or commitments in serious relationships.This is a biography that should appeal to those who simply love biographies as well as those interested in Ellroy's work. I'm not sure someone who hasn't experienced what Ellroy has can fully understand him, I'm not sure he understands himself (do any of us?

It was the source of a lifelong obsession with another cold case, the murder of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, the ‘Black Dahlia’, the subject of his 1987 crime novel of that name, of which Powell says: ‘Surface is essential in this world, speaking as it does to success but also when penetrated, exposing twisted sexual desires and psychotic motivations. During one induction, a Mexican drag queen started patting Ellroy's knee and saying playfully in an effeminate voice "Hi, I'm Peaches. During his long career, Ellroy has won numerous awards and found additional success with articles and essays, noir screen and script writing, crime documentaries, memoir and public speaking engagements. It is perhaps because he has never discovered the truth about his mother’s death that Ellroy has embraced the paranoia which gives a charge to his best books: in The Black Dahlia, LA Confidential and American Tabloid, catastrophes are never random, but the result of the intricate machinations of a corrupt political class and the crooked cops who prop it up.Clearly the die had been cast by Ellroy’s charming but wayward father and complicated but selfish mother.

Powell certainly gives us an impressively detailed account of the artist as a young drug abuser, burglar and sex-obsessed voyeur, a period that also includes the teenaged Ellroy acting tough with “his classroom Nazi act”. As I said in my review of Ellroy's latest novel (the disappointing, overcooked but compulsively readable WIDESPREAD PANIC), I'm a huge fan of his work. Steven Powell obviously has a great understanding of this author and insight into his public and private life. Like the Demon Dog himself, Love Me Fierce in Danger is by turns hilarious, shocking, compassionate, hopeful, uncompromising, optimistic, determined, and—ultimately successful at the ambitious task of detailing an equally ambitious and epic life.As Powell reveals, Ellroy’s mother’s murder and his upbringing in 1950s Los Angeles, always on the periphery of Hollywood, had a substantial influence on his writing. Some of these women nursed him though health and emotional episodes, drug dependency, rehab programs, and mental breakdowns. If anything, you sense Powell feels safer discussing his subject’s sexual conduct than his right-wing (sometimes far-right) views, which are mostly attributed to an understandable hunger for attention in his youth.