Bay Area Premiere! A self-professed "demon dog," James Ellroy is the most startling, audacious, and certifiable of a new generation of hard-boiled writers. Known chiefly for his L.A. Quartet, a sustained nightmare of fierce writing, Ellroy has redefined the shadowy edges of the crime novel. His turf is Los Angeles, a garish landscape where the glaring light of the sun is matched only by the dark hearts of men. Jud's Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction brings us the writer up close and howling. Ellroy takes us on a personal tour of the city that nurtured his grave creative impulses. He shows us his old haunts, stands with pained honesty beside the scruffy bushes where his mother was found strangled in 1958. Ellroy's memories crackle like an electric chair as he describes his early manhood as a petty thief and drug-addled roustabout. Through pure force of will, he redirected his bedeviled energies into the novel, finding his way through the grim scandals of The Black Dahlia, into the ripening fury of The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential, and culminating in the masterful bebop of White Jazz. Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction delivers James Ellroy in shades that are darker than noir.-Steve Seid