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The L.A. Quartet is a sequence of four crime fiction novels by James Ellroy set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles.[1][2][3] They are:
Elmore Leonard wrote that "reading The Black Dahlia aloud would shatter wine glasses". Several characters from the L.A. Quartet, most notably Dudley Smith, were introduced in Ellroy's 1982 novel Clandestine, which is set between 1951 and 1955 and makes reference to the Black Dahlia killing and Dudley Smith's investigation into it. The four novels, along with The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy novels, were recently reprinted in 2019 into omnibus editions part of the Everyman's Library series.
Ellroy has also started writing The L.A. Quintet, which takes place before the events of The L.A. Quartet. It includes the real life and fictional characters from The L.A. Quartet and The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. Three novels of The Second L.A. Quartet have been released: Perfidia in 2014, This Storm in 2019, and The Enchanters in 2023.