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What significant event in James Ellroy’s early life influenced his writing?

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In 1958 James Ellroy’s mother was murdered in El Monte, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. The crime was never solved. Ellroy was 10 years old, and the event profoundly influenced his life and writing. Along with his crime novels set in Los Angeles, Ellroy published the autobiographical My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir (1996) and The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women (2010), in which he discusses the crime and its impact on him.