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Review by Charles Wyrick
Once in a blue moon a book will appear that one can truly call incomparable. Whether it be for the mastery of its language or for the heroicism of its research, My Dark Places exists in a world all its own. In his new book, James Ellroy takes on the unimaginably difficult task of investigating the long unsolved murder of his mother in 1958. The book soberly looks into the past at a violent crime that stole a life from a young boy and the world. Both disturbing and inspirational, My Dark Places stands as a work of amazing personal integrity as well as an engrossing revelation on the nature of crime itself.
In investigating his mother's murder Ellroy's technique can be simply defined as immersion. His primary tools are police reports, and as a researcher Ellroy meticulously follows these records. Homicide reports are daunting historical artifacts, and much of Ellroy's book focuses on these grisly reports because they are all he has.
Yet in order to find out more about the crime Ellroy also attempts to reconstruct the era. He looks into similar crimes occurring in and around Los Angeles during the late 1950s. What emerges from Ellroy's research is both a meditation on the nature of crimes of passion and a broad view of an era in the development of the social climate of Los Angeles.
My Dark Places ultimately is a book of revelations. In trying to find a murderer Ellroy discovers his mother. Through the clipped and stale language of police reports he reconstructs for himself a life of an individual he had never known. The book is both a realization of the beauty of a stolen life and Ellroy's own revelation of the love he had unknowingly denied his mother and himself. For decades Ellroy lived with only a ten-year-old's memories of a person he once knew long ago. My Dark Places recovers a life out from the shadow of crime while also telling the story of one man's courageous search for answers.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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