The Big Nowhere

The plot is about three characters; L.A. Deputy Sheriff Danny Upshaw is trying to capture a brutal sex murderer while he participates, somewhat reluctantly, in a scheme to expose communists in Hollywood. Turner "Buzz" Meeks, a disgraced former cop, is now working for millionaire Howard Hughes and gangster Mickey Cohen. LAPD lieutenant Malcolm "Mal" Considine, involved in a bitter child custody case, tries, with varying success, to do the right things in an environment of deception, paranoia, and brutality. The story takes place in the aftermath of the notorious Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the resultant Zoot Suit Riots.

While the novel mocks opportunistic red-baiting as a scam to oust organized labor to benefit political careers and the fortunes of movie studio executives and mobsters, Ellroy is no easier on the film colony's communists and fellow travelers, many of whom he depicts as decadent hypocrites, who are easily compromised into "naming names" to hide their dirty secrets. As with most of Ellroy's fiction, he liberally employs the brutal slang of the times. Gays are "fruits," "homos", and "nances;" black people are "boogies" and "jigs:" and their neighborhoods are all "Niggertown."

The Big Nowhere received many positive reviews. Detroit News said, "THE BIG NOWHERE is a stunner....It's a huge, sprawling canvas of postwar Los Angeles as a black hole. It's Harry Bosch between hard covers, taking up where film noir left off as it introduces a trio of warped, cynical cops hopping aboard the Red Scare bandwagon." Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A., praised the book, saying, "THE BIG NOWHERE is a startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. Through the eyes of some unforgettable, two-fisted cops we are taken from the Katydid Club to the Sunset Strip where the legendary crimelord Mickey Cohen buys the drinks...and the D.A. This is a compelling piece." Rave Reviews wrote, "James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia rocked the literary world last year. Now he's back with an even more powerful and compelling novel of greed, dark passion, and murder....James Ellroy has gone from one of the most impressive crime writers of the 1980s to a major literary voice of the twentieth century. THE BIG NOWHERE is a masterpiece-a powerful and disturbing novel no one should miss." While "The Big Nowhere" was praised for being engrossing and atmospheric,[1] it was also criticized for the "unrelenting negative stereotypes" depicted in the gay and minority characters.[2] The Big Nowhere also won Ellroy the Prix Mystère Award, in 1990.

• The Big Nowhere is featured in Christopher Nolan's 2014 film, Interstellar, as one of the many novels in Murph's bookshelf.[3][4][5][6][7]