Created by James Ellroy
(1948–)
Hard up for paying cases, the former LAPD detective finds himself working for the DA’s office, tracking down third-rate nightclub singer and heroin addict Maggie Cordova who may — or may not — have been involved in a botched bank robbery over in Japtown.
When he catches up to her and catches her act, she’s wearing a “spangly gown, long-sleeved, probably to hide her needle tracks,” and warbling “Prison of Love,” a song written especially for Spade by Lorna K., the former lover (also a singer) who he hasn’t seen since she bailed on him four years ago. Still obsessed, the job quickly switches to a hunt for his lost love, and soon enough we’re deep in Ellroy Land, full of drugs, violence, a lanaudum binge, crooked cops, an Alien Squad grift, a jaunt to Mexico, and more betrayal, misogyny and casual racial slurs than you think could fit into one short story.
“Torch Number” first appeared in the 1990 Private Eyes of America anthology Justice for Hire, and later was rounded up in in the Ellroy collection Hollywood Nocturnes (1994; aka “Dick Contino’s Blues and Other Short Stories”).
In 2004, the story formed the basis for the graphic novel Torch Song, written and illustrated by the Belgian collective Ptoma. Unfortunately, the book’s only available in French (and later Italian).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James “Mad Dog” Ellroy, of course, is famous for his hyped-up prose style and his conspiracy-bloated tall tales of corrupt L.A. cops and historical figures in the bestselling L.A. Quartet novels such as The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, but he’s also given us slacker PI Fritz Brown, and PI-adjacent characters like 1950’s scandal sheet editor Danny Getchell and tabloid muckraker Freddie Otash.
UNDER OATH
- “Good meaty stuff in classic Ellroy style.”
— Colin Ricketts (April 2016, For Reading Addicts)
SHORT STORIES
- “Torch Number” (1990, Justice for Hire)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
- TORCH SONG | Buy this book
(2004, Emmanuel Proust)
Based on the short story “Torch Number” by James Ellroy
Written and illustrated by Otomi
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- City of Angels, City of Dicks
Los Angeles Eyes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
