The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women, A Memoir

James Ellroy

Ellroy’s mother, after whom he lusted, was murdered when he was 10-years-old. Three months earlier, after a falling out during which she had slapped him, the young Ellroy had wished her dead. This is the curse of the title, which was to set him off on a lifelong quest for wholeness and forgiveness at having (as he believed it) caused her death, a life spent seeking atonement in women.

It was to be “a life lived at warp speed”, encompassing alcohol and drug addiction, spells in prison, a breakdown, literary success and women, always women — women spied on, multitudinous one night stands and affairs, and a couple of failed marriages.