L.A. Noir - Hardcover

Here's James Ellroy, with a line from Silent Terror: "It's easy to love the place at first glance and even easier to hate it when you get to sense the people who live there."

Gar Anthony Haywood, from When Last Seen Alive: "Silver Lake was the Los Angeles capital of schizophrenia." Gerald Petievich, from The Quality of the Informant: "The second-story view from the window was of another apartment house. In Santa Monica, a blocked ocean view was the sign of an affordable address."

From Love Is a Racket, here is John Ridley's take: "Hollywood, the physical Hollywood with its low-rent lifestyle, is where you end up when everything else you ever planned on, or dreamed about, or hoped for in life didn't pan out. The air stinks of desperation; take a deep breath and see if you don't choke on the hopelessness."

And, from Walter Mosley's A Little Yellow Dog: "The cops found Andrew Brown trying to limp away from school. He was the definition of a loser in L.A.: A man without a car."

That's more lines than I planned to use here, but it's addictive. And so are the superb photographs by Peter Treadwell, which make you feel you've seen all of Los Angeles that you'll ever need to see. --Otto Penzler