Best books...chosen by James Ellroy
James Ellroy’s latest novel is This Storm, the second installment of his Second L.A.
Quartet. His first L.A. Quartet, which includes L.A. Confidential and The Black
Dahlia, was recently republished by Everyman’s Library as a single-volume hardcover.The Book List ARTS^23
The Deceivers by John D. MacDonald (1958).
The author of the Travis McGee series wrote a
number of lesser-known novels. They hold up
very handily—in a literary sense. They largely deal
with adultery and alcoholism in 1950s America,
but have none of the laborious arty-fartiness of
Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. They are
harrowing, bitter, and reek of desperation.The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva.
I’ve read 19 of Mr. Silva’s books in the past six
months, so the plots have melded together, but
their great and timely theme is the defense of the
West. The protagonist, Gabriel Allon, is an Old
Master restorer and Mossad hitman. When he’s
not bumping off radical Islamists and IRA gun-
men, he’s tracking down Nazi plunder or saving
the pope.The following three novels are the big ones
for me. Compulsion by Meyer Levin (1956).
Compulsion is based on the Leopold and Loeb
killing. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were
brilliant college graduates who, at 19, decided
to perform the perfect motiveless crime, andkilled a boy named Bobby Franks. Levin deftly
portrays affluent Jewish-American life in 1920s
Chicago—a crackerjack book. P.S.: They should
have fried for this caper!!!!!True Confes sions by John Gregory Dunne
(1977). One of two enduring works of art on the
Black Dahlia murder, my book being the other.
Written by the late husband of Joan Didion,
it is a fantastical portrayal of L.A. after World
War II. He distorts many of the facts, which
allowed me the wiggle room to write my own
book 10 years later.Libra by Don DeLillo (1988). I credit this great
novel on the Kennedy assassination with inspir-
ing my entire Underworld USA Trilogy.Portrait in Smoke by Bill S. Ballinger (1951).
This is the ultimate evil woman novel. It’s set in
mid-century Chicago, and charts the comeup-
pance of an obsessed bill collector and a stun-
ningly provocative psychopath. Ooooooooh,
Daddy-O—this one will lash your libido and bite
your boogaloo!!!!!Also of interest...in mythical and magical creatures
Haben Girma
“Haben Girma would prefer
not to be called inspiring,”
said Emily Bobrow in The
Wall Street Journal. Yes,
the Oakland native was the
first deaf-blind graduate of
Harvard Law School, earning
her degree in 2013. And yes,
she also surfs,
salsa dances,
and climbs
glaciers. But
she hears pity
in the word
“inspiring”
when it’s not
linked to an
action. “I ask people, ‘What
are you inspired to do?’” she
says. “Use inspiration as a
verb: ‘I’m inspired to make my
website more accessible’; ‘I’m
inspired to learn salsa danc-
ing.’ Frame it terms of some-
thing positive you want to do
in the world.” Girma, 31, also
insists that she’s not unusually
strong-willed—that there are
many other deaf-blind people
who are just as capable. “The
remarkable thing about me,”
she says, “is that I was given
the opportunity to excel.”
Girma’s new memoir, titled
simply Haben, suggests
she’s being too humble, said
Julianne Pepitone in NBC
News.com. As a child, she was
able to attend mainstream
public schools because they
provided Braille reading mate-
rials and other accommoda-
tions for her. But it was her
idea to travel to Mali as a teen-
ager to help rebuild a school.
And it was Girma who, with
a friend, devised a dual key-
board system that allows her
to converse even at Harvard
grad-student parties: When
the other person types a mes-
sage, she receives it instantly
as Braille and can respond
by speaking or typing back.
Today, she travels the world
advocating greater inclusion of
people with disabilities, espe-
cially in the workplace. “We
are talented; we work hard,”
she says. “It’s just ableism, the
assumption that people with
disabilities are inferior, that
gets in our way.”Author of the week
Newscom, Sean Fenn
“Books on supernatural phenomena
typically steer one of two courses:
tabloid gullibility or mean-spirited
debunkery,” said Eric Weiner in The
Washington Post. In this account of his
search for Sasquatch, writer John Zada
“deftly tightropes between the two,” displaying
a healthy mix of empathy and skepticism as he
wanders Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest question-
ing locals who believe in the legendary woodland
biped. The book, in the end, is “not really about
Sasquatch.” It’s “about the power of myth.”In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond
by John Zada (Atlantic Monthly, $26)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “richly pica-
resque” third novel begins as a 1920s
Mexican Cinderella tale, said Eric
Brown in TheGuardian.com. But then
18-year-old Casiopea, a servant on her
grandfather’s Yucatán estate, opens a
locked chest that holds the bones of the Mayan
god of death. She’s soon wandering Mexico with
Hun-Kamé in a bid to restore him to his throne
in the underworld. The novel becomes “a moving
description of a young girl’s coming of age and a
seamless fusion of the real and the magical.”Gods of Jade and Shadow
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey, $26)“I’d about given up on zombie-
apocalypse narratives until Kira Jane
Buxton came along,” said Erin Keane
in Salon.com. In Buxton’s clever
debut, a foulmouthed crow is content
living as a pet until his owner starts
showing plague symptoms. Whatever ails Big Jim
seems to be spreading fast, as the crow discovers
after venturing out for answers, accompanied by
Jim’s dim-witted dog. The novel shows human-
ity at its worst while also capturing “how hope,
even the tiniest sliver, can power us through our
darkest hours.”Hollow Kingdom
by Kira Jane Buxton (Grand Central, $27)
Judged as a contribution to zoology,
Linda Godfrey’s new book is “very
nearly useless,” said Steve Donoghue
in OpenLettersReview.com. But
Godfrey is “a skilled listener and
a wonderfully assured storyteller,”
and she has spent years collecting reports from
people who are certain they’ve spotted the Loch
Ness Monster or any number of other unrecog-
nized species. As a collection of campfire tales,
the book can’t be beat. “Take it along the next
time you go camping and scare yourself catatonic
once the sun goes down.”I Know What I Saw
by Linda S. Godfrey (TarcherPerigee, $25)