The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Destination: Morgue

Destination: Morgue

Summary

Hollywood Fuckpad, Hot Prowl Rape-O and Jungletown Jihad are vintage Ellroy: starting in 1983 and ending in the present day, they are interlinked novellas telling the story of a bad cop, Rick Jenson, and his twenty-year obsession with Donna Donahue, a beautiful Hollywood actress. The only way Rick can get close to Donna is by bringing her into investigations of the teeming Tinseltown underworld: psychopathic killers, stalkers and terrorists commingle in an unholy cocktail of sex, sleaze and violence. Jenson and Donahue cut a swathe through the cases, treading a high wire of danger and a fatal sexual attraction.

The book also contains eight previously unpublished non-fiction articles ranging from cases from the Los Angeles Police Unsolved Homicide files to the first article Ellroy has ever written on his imaginative process: Where I Get My Weird Shit.

This is James Ellroy's second collection of short pieces following on from Dick Contino's Blues.

'James Ellroy is a genius: the finest American crime writer since Raymond Chandler, and one of the most readable experimental writers in the world' TLS

'All Ellroy's preoccupations are present: corruption, sex, violence, unsolved murders and excess by the dozen. As ever the results are as fascinating as a car crash' Guardian

'One of the finest US writers. Admirers will be pleased to learn that Ellroy's Mad Dog voice barks as loudly as ever, continuing to create it's own howling, breathtaking brand of powerful, pumped-up poetry' City Life

Reviews

  • James Ellory is a genius: the finest American crime writer since Raymond Chandler, and one of the most readable experimental writers in the world
    TLS

About the author

James Ellroy

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover, and the L.A. Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Colorado.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more