La Confidential
Confidential (1990) is neo-noir crime novel by James Ellroy, and the third in his L.A. Quartet series.
Plot
The story is about Los Angeles policemen in the 1950s who are caught up in a mixture of lies, sex, corruption, and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop.
The story eventually encompasses organized crime, political corruption, heroin, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism, institutional racism, plastic surgery, and Hollywood. The novel's title refers to the infamous 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, which was fictionalized as Hush-Hush magazine in the novel (although a tabloid magazine called Hush-Hush also existed in 1950s).
Jack Vincennes is a slick and likable Hollywood cop who moonlights as the technical adviser for Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-like television show.
Vincennes is connected with Hush-Hush: He receives hefty payoffs for making orchestrated celebrity arrests, often involving narcotics, that will attract even more readers to the magazine—and more fame to himself.
Edmund Exley, the son of a legendary LAPD cop, is a brilliant detective determined to outdo his father. His intelligence, his education, his glasses, his insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor all contribute to Ed's social isolation from other officers.
He increases the resentment against him by testifying against cops in a police brutality case (based on the Bloody Christmas incident) early in the novel. His determination to make a name for himself while at the same time fulfilling his own personal vendettas cause him to progress from a milquetoast to a cold-blooded killer.
Wendell "Bud" White, one of the most feared men in the LAPD, is a six-foot tall muscleman.
Parker
Robert Harrison (publisher)
Film adaptation
The book was adapted for a 1997 film of the same title, directed and cowritten by Curtis Hanson and starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn and Danny DeVito.
In 2003, the film was adapted into a pilot for a TV series, with Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Vincennes. The pilot flopped, and the series was not picked up.
.