Saturday the 7th of November 2009. The Waterfront. Belfast. A man came to visit and somewhere deep inside me I knew things would never be the same………..Please excuse the cack-handed attempt to ape the style of a true master. The night James Ellroy came to visit Belfast to publicise his new Blood’s A Rover, the long awaited final part of his Underworld USA trilogy, will be a night long cherished by fans of American crime fiction. The event was organised with aplomb by David of No Alibis fame, who had somehow managed to secure Belfast as the final leg of Ellroy’s exhaustive tour. He came lurching on looking for all the world like John Malkovich’s dad, he read some selected passages from Blood’s a Rover, well I say read but I can’t help but feel it doesn’t really do him justice Barked and snarled seems much more apt. A short interview followed with Stuart Neville, where you could see he wanted to ask Mr Ellroy tough questions, but I think he was just as awestruck as the rest of us.
However there was meat in his responses and Ellroy emerged as a bizarrely and infuriatingly contradictory person, I drew my own conclusion that he’s basically a right-wing nut-job with strong liberal views; God only knows how he gets through the day? He talked about why the book took so long, he talked about an affair he engaged in and he also spoke about his breakdown. Blunt honest and self-effacing doesn’t even begin to cover it. The Q&A with the audience went over well, however he was welcomed to Belfast so many times I suspect he begin to worry was he ever getting out of the place. Also time has softened his attitude towards the movie LA Confidential, years ago when it came out, he had very little time for it, but he spoke fondly of it and even cracked a joke about one of the actors involved. My heart did go out to the poor guy who stood up and praised his favourite Ellroy book before asking his question about it. Only to get the response, basically translated as I hate that book, I wrote it for money and I will never write another like it.
As I left the Waterfront that night clutching my copy of Blood’s A Rover, I looked back and saw Mr Ellroy holding court, signing books and joking with his fans. I noticed a man staring intently at him. This guy looked like he had stepped straight off the pages of an Ellroy novel. A quiet man bristling with tension and ruthlessness. I asked David who he was and was told it was Ellroy’s agent who had flown in from New York for the last night of the tour. Of course it was, who else could it possibly be.
