Interview in Brooklyn Rail

I’ve been interviewed by novelist Jill Dearman for the latest edition of the Brooklyn Rail. We discuss my most recent book on James Ellroy, The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World, and my lifelong work/obsession with the Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction.

I’ve interviewed many great crime writers over the years, but this is the first time I’ve been interviewed myself for a publication and, unlike Ellroy, I didn’t have to write it myself!

Here’s a snippet:

James Ellroy’s novels and nonfiction are the stuff of obsession. But what kind of an obsessive writer would dedicate his reading, researching and writing time to uncracking the code of the famed L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia author. That writer in question would be a humble and deeply curious British biographer named Steven Powell. Read More.