Like Hot Knives to the Brain

Peter Wolfe is the Curators' Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His many book subjects include Graham Greene, Jean Rhys, Raymond Chandler, Yukio Mishima, William Gaddis, and the Twilight Zone television series. Wolfe's shorter works have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, the L. A. Times, the Washington Post, the New Zealand Listener, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Calcutta Statesman, and Modern Fiction Studies.

• Chapter 1 An All-Star Cast of RuffiansChapter 2 Ghostly VisitationsChapter 3 The Art of AttackChapter 4 A Cosmology with MirrorsChapter 5 Riding a Nightmare with Crazy LloydChapter 6 Back-door Justice on the Killing Fields: The L.A. QuartetChapter 7 An All-Star Criminal Cast

Wolfe is that rare creature in the literary jungle: a generous-minded pundit who loves writers, explores their world honestly and diligently, and gives us his findings with affection, elegance, and impressive insight. James Ellroy is a lucky man.