James Ellroy is the real deal. The real, raw deal. The international best selling author of L.A. Confidential, among others, pulls no punches when it comes to the sex, drugs and violence of the American underworld, particularly in his native Los Angeles.

After standing me up for an interview that his publicist neglected to tell him about, Ellroy took me to dinner at one of Boston’s oldest patrician steakhouses. He began by ordering four shots of espresso with ice on the side—and I quickly discovered that he was loud and direct, but maintained a conscious politeness throughout our conversation.

Nor does he shy away from the gritty details of his own life. At the presentation of his newest book, Destination: Morgue!, at the Brattle Theater on Monday, his fiction was implicitly linked to his own experiences.

Billing himself as the “death dog with the hog log,” Ellroy involved the audience immediately with his vibrant demeanor and booming voice. Amid ever increasing laughter, he thanked them for coming and “taking time off from your drug habits, your sex lives and your misguided efforts to unseat President Bush.”

“If you buy one thousand copies of my book,” Ellroy shouted, “you will have unlimited sex with each and every person on this earth that you desire every night for the rest of your lives.”

The book is a collection of Ellroy’s fiction and nonfiction, which includes previously published pieces as well as three new novellas. Ellroy read from one of these, “Jungletown Jihad.” He described it as “the world’s only comedy about the specter of Arab terrorism.”

Ellroy gesticulated loudly as he read, often yelling into the microphone for emphasis, and firmly planted his legs on the stage. The story, like all of Ellroy’s work, was blunt and graphic at times, funny at others, but always hard-hitting.

“The guy jumped from the car,” Ellroy read, “his face was a four-alarm fire…[he] sizzled and fizzled. The guy sputtered sparks and dipped dead.”

Amid the alliterative sentences and one phrase paragraphs characteristic of Ellroy’s furious style are photographs of L.A. personalities and other people who had an influence on Ellroy’s life. Ellroy was particularly enthusiastic to point out the inclusion of Kaya Christian, November 1967 Playboy Playmate of the month.

Mostly, though, it is crime—brutal, clipped, ass-kicking crime—that garners Ellroy’s attention. As the title suggests, Destination: Morgue!, like most of Ellroy’s writing, does not shrink from this dark theme. Its pages, if they emulated their contents, would be ripped, blood-soaked and stomped on.

THE BACK STORY

To understand the hard-boiled nature of Ellroy’s work, as well as his midnight sense of humor, it’s vital to understand where he came from. His book jackets brusquely state that “James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948,” which he referred to as “my smog-bound fatherland.” Ellroy admitted, “I think that says it all.”

There’s more to the story, though. When Ellroy was ten, his mother was murdered and her body dumped in a ditch. A few years later his dad died too, of natural causes. His last words to his son were “try to pick up every waitress that serves you.”

For 12 years Ellroy wandered L.A., living with friends and in parks, nearly continuously drunk and high from ingesting the cotton soaked wads of Benzedrex inhalers and drinking alcohol and cough syrup. He broke into women’s homes and stole their panties. He worked at a store called Porno Villa and afterwards would “drink [himself] into oblivion,” over his loneliness.