L.A. Quartet

The L.A. Quartet is a sequence of four crime fiction novels by James Ellroy set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles. They are:

Elmore Leonard wrote that "reading The Black Dahlia aloud would shatter wine glasses."

Several characters from the L.A. Quartet, most notably Dudley Smith, were introduced in Ellroy's 1983 novel Clandestine, which takes place between 1951 and 1955 and makes reference to the Black Dahlia killing and Smith's investigation into it.

The Black Dahlia, the first novel in the series, follows a brutal murder in the late 1940s. January 15, 1947, is the date Elizabeth Short's body was discovered in a vacant lot. Officers Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Leland "Lee" Blanchard, partners and local celebrities from their boxing days, aid the investigation.

The next novel, The Big Nowhere, takes place in the early 1950s amidst the Red Scare in Hollywood. Former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Buzz Meeks, who now works as an enforcer for Mickey Cohen and a pimp for Howard Hughes, gets caught up in a communist investigation that has ties to a series of homosexual murders that are being investigated by a sheriff's deputy named Danny Upshaw. The work of Meeks and Upshaw also crosses paths with the investigations of Mal Considine and Dudley Smith, who are working on a communist case of their own.

The third novel, L.A. Confidential, spans the length of about eight years—from early 1950 to about April 1958. The story begins on February 21, 1950, with Buzz Meeks being found at an abandoned auto court where he is hiding out. Meeks is killed by Dudley Smith, and the 18 pounds of heroin Meeks stole from a Jack Dragna-Mickey Cohen truce meeting is subsequently retrieved by Smith. A year later, Bloody Christmas occurs: the beating of unarmed suspects by LAPD officers on Christmas Day. Ed Exley, Bud White, and Jack Vincennes are the main officers caught in the scandal. On April 16, 1953, the Nite Owl Massacre becomes the focus of the LAPD. The massacre was the killing of civilians in an all-night restaurant. Three African Americans are the suspects. While resisting arrest, they are gunned down by Exley, who is made a hero. Years pass, but new evidence emerges that the African-American youths were innocent of the Nite Owl killings and the case is reopened. Ultimately, between Exley, White, and Vincennes, a giant criminal conspiracy is uncovered. The plot involved Mickey Cohen, the drug rackets, pornography, the stolen heroin from the mob meeting years back, a chemist trying to alter the chemical compound of the heroin to improve it, framing the African-American youths, and at the center of all of it, Dudley Smith. In the end, Smith escapes prosecution for the plot. The Nite Owl gunmen are killed, as well as other conspirators in Smith's scheme. Bud White ends up a cripple, but wins Lynn Bracken's heart. Jack Vincennes is killed in the line of duty while trying to stop prisoners from escaping. Ed Exley, despite becoming a chief of detectives, loses his father, who commits suicide. While despising each other at first, Exley and White become friends. Exley swears to White he will bring Dudley Smith down.

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