The L.A. Quartet is a sequence of four crime fiction novels by James Ellroy set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles. They are: (1987) The Black Dahlia (1988) The Big Nowhere (1990) L.A. Confidential (1992) White Jazz
Elmore Leonard wrote that "reading The Black Dahlia aloud would shatter wine glasses". Several characters from the L.A. Quartet, most notably Dudley Smith, were introduced in Ellroy's 1982 novel Clandestine, which is set between 1951 and 1955 and makes reference to the Black Dahlia killing and Dudley Smith's investigation into it. The four novels, along with The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy novels, were recently reprinted in 2019 into omnibus editions part of the Everyman's Library series.
Ellroy has also started writing The L.A. Quintet, which takes place before the events of The L.A. Quartet. It includes the real life and fictional characters from The L.A. Quartet and The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. Three novels of The Second L.A. Quartet have been released: Perfidia in 2014, This Storm in 2019, and The Enchanters in 2023.
Summary The Black Dahlia, the first novel in the series, follows a brutal murder in the late 1940s. On January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short's body was discovered in a vacant lot. Officers Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Leland "Lee" Blanchard, partners and local celebrities from their boxing days, aid the investigation.
The next novel, The Big Nowhere, takes place in the early 1950s amidst the Red Scare in Hollywood. Former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Buzz Meeks, who now works as an enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen and a pimp for Howard Hughes, gets caught up in a communist investigation that has ties to a series of homosexual murders that are being investigated by a sheriff's deputy named Danny Upshaw. The work of Meeks and Upshaw also crosses paths with the investigations of Mal Considine and Dudley Smith, who are working on a communist case of their own.
The third novel, L.A. Confidential, spans about eight years—from early 1950 to about April 1958. The story begins on February 21, 1950, when Buzz Meeks is found at an abandoned auto court where he is hiding out. Meeks is killed by Dudley Smith, and the 18 pounds of heroin Meeks stole from a Jack Dragna-Mickey Cohen truce meeting is subsequently retrieved by Smith. A year later, Bloody Christmas occurs: the beating of unarmed suspects by LAPD officers on Christmas Day. Ed Exley, Bud White, and Jack Vincennes are the main officers caught in the scandal. On April 16, 1953, the Nite Owl Massacre becomes the focus of the LAPD. The massacre involved the killing of civilians in an all-night restaurant. Three African Americans are the suspects. While resisting arrest, they are gunned down by Exley, who is proclaimed a hero. Years pass, and new evidence emerges that the African-American youths were innocent of the Nite Owl killings. The case is reopened. Ultimately, between Exley, White, and Vincennes, a criminal conspiracy involving Smith, Stensland, and Meeks is uncovered. It involved Mickey Cohen, the drug rackets, pornography, the stolen heroin from years back, a chemist trying to alter the chemical compound of the heroin to improve it, framing the African-American youths, and at the center of all of it, Dudley Smith. In the end, Smith escapes prosecution. The Nite Owl gunmen are killed, as well as other conspirators in Smith's scheme. Bud White ends up a cripple. Jack Vincennes is killed in the line of duty while trying to stop prisoners from escaping. Ed Exley, now chief of detectives, loses his father, who commits suicide. Although they despised each other at first, Exley and White become friends. Exley swears to White he will bring Dudley Smith down.
The final novel in the L.A. Quartet is White Jazz, told from corrupt LAPD officer Dave Klein's point of view. As a policeman, Klein has broken the law numerous times, beaten suspects, stolen, bribed, worked for the mob, and had people killed, as well as being a murderer himself. In late 1958, Klein, the commander of Administrative Vice, is assigned a burglary of the sanctioned drug-dealing family, the Kafesjians. Klein does not see the case as a priority, but Narcotics Division commander Dan Wilhite and Deputy Chief Ed Exley want the case solved. Klein takes a sideline job from Howard Hughes, who wants Klein to find evidence that would violate an actress's contract. Klein falls in love with his target, Glenda Bledsoe. While working the Kafesjian burglary, Klein discovers that Exley is still trying to bring down Dudley Smith. When he figures that out, Klein begins working with Exley, who tells him all about Dudley. When Klein meets an undercover officer, Johnny Duhamel, who is working Smith on behalf of Exley, Klein is shot up with drugs. Being coerced, Klein murders Duhamel with his Marine sword and is taped committing the murder. Klein is arrested by the FBI the following day for possession of heroin. He becomes a federal witness, and is given 48 hours before he is taken into custody. Klein and Exley discover other Dudley Smith sidelines, selling heroin to the South Los Angeles African-American population, keeping crime in that area "contained", gambling, and voyeuristic pornography tapes. Klein and Exley find the Kafesjians' burglar, Wylie Bullock. Later that night, everything hits Klein: all his crimes and everything that is happening. He decides to meet Smith later that night, who offered Klein a deal earlier. Unbeknownst to Smith, Klein brings Wylie Bullock, who has a grudge against Smith. When the two meet, Bullock attacks Smith, ripping out his eye and slashing his face ear to ear. Klein shoots Bullock and runs off. An all-points bulletin is issued on Klein and he is caught. A custody battle ensues between the FBI and the LAPD for Klein, which the FBI wins. While in federal custody, Klein writes a full confession of everything he has done, and everything that has happened. He has copies sent to Hush-Hush, the Los Angeles Times, and the State Attorney General's Office. However, Klein escapes custody. He hides out with Pete Bondurant (a character who reappears in the Underworld USA Trilogy series' American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand). After his escape, Klein's confessions fall on deaf ears, with only Hush-Hush magazine willing to print it. However, they are silenced by legal action and prevented from printing the confession that would have "brought the LAPD to its knees." Howard Hughes feels betrayed by Dave Klein because of the Bledsoe job. He has Bondurant beat him up bad enough to require medical attention. Exley sends Klein a package in the hospital, which includes a blank passport and a gun. Exley says in his note that he considers Smith neutralized, but will allow Klein to kill Smith if he feels justice has not been absolute. Instead, Klein murders J. C. Kafesjian and Tommy Kafesjian. Klein spends one last night with Glenda Bledsoe, takes pictures of her to remember her by, and leaves for the airport. Around late January 1959, Klein leaves the United States. In the epilogue, set many years later (1976 at the earliest), Klein says he plans to return to Los Angeles, with the intentions of making gubernatorial candidate Exley confess to the manipulative deals he made, murder Dick Carlisle and Dudley Smith, and find his lover Glenda Bledsoe.
Characters
Dudley Liam Smith Appearances: Clandestine, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, Perfidia, This Storm
Smith was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1905, and later immigrated to the United States and was raised in Los Angeles, where he joined the LAPD in 1928. In The Big Nowhere, Dudley Smith is described as tall, beefside broad, and red-faced, with brown hair and brown eyes, as well as having a tenor brogue and being Jesuit college-trained. His verbal style also indicates he is a lexophile. In L.A. Confidential, Jack Vincennes tells Bud White and Edmund Exley that Dudley worked in the OSS in Paraguay after World War II. Also, in White Jazz a newspaper story mentions he was a World War II OSS spymaster, has a wife and five daughters, and has killed eight men in the line of duty. Smith was the clandestine protector of two rival criminal families, the Herricks and the Kafesjians, in the 1930s. In 1942 he murdered José Diaz in the infamous Sleepy Lagoon murder case. He is first mentioned in Clandestine, which is set in 1951, and again in 1950 in The Big Nowhere, where he is recruited by Deputy D.A. Ellis Loew to investigate communist influence in Hollywood. He and his partner Mal Considine pursue this assignment with vigor. It was in this book that the extent of his personal corruption was revealed; as well as José Diaz, Dudley and his men were involved in other criminal activities, and in February 1950 Dudley personally tracked down and killed protagonist Buzz Meeks as is stated in the prologue to L.A. Confidential. By 1950 Dudley had reached the rank of Lieutenant, and he would remain there throughout the 1950s, until his promotion to Captain in 1958. By this time, his personal rivalry with fellow LAPD Captain Edmund Exley resulted in a power struggle between both men, which Edmund Exley won when Smith was attacked by a man named Wylie Bullock. This attack left him with brain damage that rendered him essentially semi-lucid, and only rarely lucid. Also in the attack, he lost an eye, and is paralyzed, and will probably never be able to walk again. It is unknown when Dudley died; however, he is apparently still alive—albeit confined to a nursing home—in 1976, as is revealed in the epilogue to White Jazz. He returns in Perfidia, set in 1941.
Smith was thoroughly unscrupulous, ruthless, and evil. He had a large list of crimes that he had committed, including theft, pornography distribution, murder, and most disturbingly, infanticide—Dudley personally strangled the two-day-old baby of the Herrick family in 1937. He was a hard line anti-communist, declaring that he hated the "Red filth worse than Satan". Dudley's racism was also well known, particularly in regards to Jews, and he was a notable proponent of "containment"; as he explained it, keeping the "nigger filth" in African-American areas.
Smith is portrayed by James Cromwell in the film adaptation of L.A. Confidential and portrayed in the 2003 television pilot of L.A. Confidential by Tom Nowicki. In a departure from the novel, Smith is killed by Exley at the end of a shootout.
Ed Exley Appearances: L.A. Confidential, White Jazz
Edmund Jennings Exley is one of the three protagonists in L.A. Confidential, and a major supporting character in White Jazz. He is the son of Preston Exley, former cop turned construction tycoon, and Marguerite Exley, Tibbetts. When he was seventeen his brother Thomas Exley, also a cop, was fatally gunned down by an unidentified purse snatcher (referred to as "Rollo Tomasi" in the film, and kills Preston Exley, instead of Thomas Exley, in the film). Ed is relentlessly ambitious, politically savvy, and highly intelligent, trying to surpass his father as a policeman and live out late Thomas's dreams. He is instilled with a belief in "absolute justice" from his father.