By JAMES ELLROY

SUMMARY:The first volume of "The L.A. Quartet" — Ellroy's fictional alternative history of the City of Angels circa the 1940s and '50s. Volume 1 is centered around Ellroy's fictional solution to the real-life mutilation murder of Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the L.A. press "The Black Dahlia." This was Ellroy's breakthrough book and the first of his novels to hit the bestseller lists. Ellroy also financed his own book tour. He dedicated the novel to his own murdered mother, whose killer, like Short's, was never caught.

PUBLISHER'S TEASER:"On the night of 10 January 1947, a beautiful young woman walked out of the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel — and set off to meet her horrifying destiny.

"On 15 January the torture-ravished body of this would-be actress was found on a vacant building lot — drained of blood and cut in half. The victim made the newspaper headlines as 'The Black Dahlia', and her appalling murder sparked off the greatest manhunt in California history.

"Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: fellow cops, friends, and rivals in love for the same woman. Both become obsessed by the Black Dahlia — driven by their own dark needs to know everything about her life...to capture her sadistic killer...to possess the mystery woman even in death.

"Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of post-war Hollywood, to the murky core of the dead girl's twisted life...and into a region of total madness.

"This brilliant and savagely original novel launches the reader on a roller coaster ride through the violent world of 1940s Los Angeles and its law enforcers. The Black Dahlia is a police novel on an epic scale — a classic period piece that provides a startling conclusion to one of the most shocking enigmas of the century."

—© Mysterious Press/CENTURY

POINTS:The novel was first published by Mysterious Press in the U.S. (ISBN: 0-89296-206-2) in September 1987. This, the U.K. hardcover edition (ISBN: 0-7126-1995-X), is extremely rare, and asking prices have recently hit $800, eclipsing even the hefty asking prices for the U.K. hardcover editions of "Brown's Requiem" and "Clandestine."

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