Court TV opens normally closed windows and allows viewers to peer into the inner landscape of five top crime writers. James Ellroy, Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman, Michael Connelly and Lisa Scottoline are top in their field, and these crime writers take their story-telling skills to a new level with their deeply-felt reactions to specific crimes and how they crashed up against the author's autobiographical storylines. Last night James Elroy told a griping first-person narrative of his mother's violent death, its dark subterannean impact on his psyche, his work, and his realtionships with women. She had haunted him all his life, and she had left footprints on every thing he had done since the day she died.
After two-plus decades, Elroy found himself steeped in another story, this time one frighteningly personal, after he vows to solve his mother's murder. He speaks eloquently in a sparse, lean cadence that is gripping in its simplicity. At one point he goes through his mother's personal belongings still in police custody.
I touched my mother's dress and smelled her on it. . .
I want to be in that death zone, I want to commune with her there.
If you enjoy crime fiction, love writing crime novels, wonder about the writers who spin these mysterious tales, then Murder by the Book is definitely a series for you. If you want to know more about Elroy's journey, read MY DARK PLACES.
Be sure and go to the Murder by the Book series interactive website for in-depth extras. Next week, Michael Connelly.
(Monday nights, 10:00 PM/Eastern, Court TV)
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