When that big head cracks

James Ellroy writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review, discusses the Black Dahlia as a book and a movie. If you have read My Dark Places, you know that like the Dahlia, Ellroy's mother was murdered in an unsolved crime. The article is just the thing for your likely unslaked Ellroy Jones. He starts off writing like a normal person, but then we get to this:

She met a man. She met him that Saturday night or knew him from before. She was drunk. She said “Yes” or “No” or “Maybe” or some encoded combination. She said “No” finally. He raped her and killed her. It was June 22, 1958.

Serious stuff from a serious guy. The article will give you a sense of why he is so whacked out and why nearly all his books include loose women who turn out to either victims or heroes.