 First edition cover | |
| Author | James Ellroy |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Jacket design by Chip Kidd Front–of–jacket photograph by Robert Morrow |
| Language | English |
| Series | L.A. Quartet |
| Genre | Crime fiction, noir, historical fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | September 1, 1992 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback), audio cassette, and audio download |
| Pages | 349 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-679-41449-5 (first edition, hardcover) |
| Preceded by | L.A. Confidential |
White Jazz is a 1992 crime fiction novel by James Ellroy. It is the fourth in his L.A. Quartet, preceded by The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, and L.A. Confidential. James Ellroy dedicated White Jazz "TO Helen Knode." The epigraph for White Jazz is "'In the end I possess my birthplace and I am possessed by its language.' -Ross MacDonald."
Lieutenant David Klein is a veteran policeman who moonlights as a hitman for organized crime. When he is assigned to investigate a robbery at the home of the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) sanctioned heroin dealer, he uncovers a plot to bring the city's crime syndicates into collusion with the channels of justice.
The stories of many characters that appeared in earlier L.A. Quartet novels, including Edmund Exley and Dudley Smith, have their ends tied up in White Jazz, which also introduces Pete Bondurant, one of the central characters in Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy.