California crime fiction
Lee Goldberg on Westerns, Crime Novels, and Writing A Genre Mash-Up
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I’ve always loved crime novels and westerns. I’ve written dozens of crime novels, but not any westerns. Or so I thought. A few years ago, at a book signing event for one of my “Eve Ronin” series of police procedurals, a reader told me I was her favorite western author, which I thought was a…
David L. Ulin on Capturing the Special, Despairing Noir of the West
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David L. Ulin has spent the better part of thirty years as the preeminent book critic in the West; first at the late, great, LA Reader and then as book review editor and later Book Critic for the Los Angeles Times and currently as the books editor for Alta Journal. At the same time, he’s…
James Ellroy Reveals the Real Reason He Writes
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“A literature that cannot be vulgarized is no literature at all, and will not last.” Frank O’Connor laid it out. He wrote the words at the cusp of the 20th century. Said words prophesied the hard-boiled novel. Hard-boiled scorched its artistic debut on February 1, 1929. Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest, hit bookstores. Hammett’s…