A programme exploring the work of crime writer James Ellroy, whose credits include LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia and My Dark Places, the latter a harrowing memoir of his own mother's murder. Ellroy later moved on from crime writing to pen his own secret history of the United States. As the second volume of his 'Underworld USA' trilogy - The Cold Six Thousand - was published in the UK in 2001, the film takes a tour of Ellroy's often disturbing world.