Best 1990 Adventures (7)

By: Joshua Glenn
May 6, 2020

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1990 adventure novels.

James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet crime adventure L.A. Confidential.

Another brutal, complicated, epic, and almost stream-of-consciousness neo-noir from the author of The Black Dahlia. Following a massacre at the Nite Owl coffee shop, three LAPD detectives — the ambitious Edmund Exley, son of a legendary LAPD detective; “Bud” White, an intimidating thug; and glory hound Jack Vincennes, technical advisor on a Dragnet-like cop show called Badge of Honor — must set their differences aside to unravel a 1950s Hollywood-centered conspiracy involving organized crime, political corruption, heroin, pornography, prostitution, and multiple murders. Evidence is withheld, backs are stabbed. Exley is an interesting character — a brilliant detective, but physically a coward. Was the Nite Owl mass murder a robbery gone wrong? Or was someone in the wrong place at the wrong time? Will our flawed protagonists redeem themselves — once they realize that they’re part of an utterly degraded, amoral system?

Fun facts: Adapted in 1997 by Curtis Hanson as a pretty good movie with a pretty great cast: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn, and Danny DeVito. The novel’s title refers to the scandal magazine Confidential, fictionalized here as Hush-Hush.

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Best 1990 Adventures (7)

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