California Noir

Two gritty hard-boiled mysteries of the criminal underworld by a New York Times–bestselling author and a CWA Gold Dagger–winning author.
A modern master of the noir novel, James Ellroy is “one of the great American writers of our time” (Los Angeles Times). And Edward Bunker is a CWA Gold Dagger–winning author, whose classic novel inspired Quentin Tarantino to cast him in Reservoir Dogs. Now two of these California writers’ most famous mysteries are available in one volume.
Blood on the Moon by James Ellroy: Lloyd Hopkins is one of Los Angeles’s finest detectives. He’s also a sex addict and an insomniac who breaks the rules to solve his toughest cases. After a psychotic serial killer called “the poet” murders twenty women, he must face his biggest challenge to catch the killer: think like a madman. The first novel in Ellroy’s Lloyd Hopkins trilogy, this noir classic was adapted into the 1988 film Cop, starring James Woods.
No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker: After eight years in San Quentin, Max Dembo is free. He has aspirations and even a modicum of faith in the future. But with a history of bad choices, an apathetic parole officer, and no job prospects, Max gives sway to the pervasive temptations of the only life he knows. Based on his own experiences in San Quentin State Prison, Bunker wrote a strikingly authentic story that Quentin Tarantino called “the best first person crime novel I have ever read.”