L.A. Confidential

A modern noir masterpiece.
It all comes back to the Nite Owl coffee shop in this hardboiled Hollywood epic, the third gripping installment in latter-day noir master James Ellroy’s acclaimed L.A. Quartet. That’s where a brutal massacre occurred one fateful night, leaving six innocents dead. Assigned to solve the crime are fame-chasing Sergeant Jack Vincennes, straight-arrow Sergeant Ed Exley, and quick-to-anger Officer Bud White. The three conflicted cops start off at odds with one another, but as the investigation drags on for close to a decade, they band together in various combinations to combat heroin dealers, mobsters, classy call girls “cut to look like movie stars,” and corruption at the highest levels of the force, city government, and showbiz. Along the way, they encounter real-life gangsters like Mickey Cohen and low-life thugs like Lana Turner’s skewered boyfriend Johnny Stampanato.

Before committing to L.A. Confidential, be sure to cancel all your other plans. Even abridged, it’s a story as sprawling as incorporated Los Angeles itself. And there’s no better tour guide to the tawdry side of the City of Angeles than native Angeleno Ellroy. A vernacular Virgil, he slings tough-guy argot like diner hash. Narrator David Strathairn does a chillingly convincing ventriloquist act as he leads us through the novelist’s dark places.