Brown's Requiem

In this debut, James Ellroy introduces the hyperreal L.A. we’ve come to know from his later work—a land of vice, corruption, and, in this case, golf.

Fritz Brown is an ex-alcoholic PI with a taste for classical music who gets by as a repo man. But he finds himself in the rough when he takes the case of a trigger-happy golf caddie who wants to destroy the older man who stole his sister’s affection. As he tries to unravel this complex case with echoes from the distant past, Fritz Brown plunges into the seedy underbelly of L.A., where the hazards include arson, incest, and murder. Brown’s Requiem is, in the author’s own words, “a righteous private-eye novel: fast, profane, densely plotted.” It is the first work of a master in the making.