Just one year after his first novel Brown's Requiem, James Ellroy Clandestine publishes and sprays rules thriller while definitively placing in orbit of the genre. It follows the debut of the police career of the young Freddy Underhill from 1951. In tandem with an old grumpy and flicard alcoholic, and yet he worships, he quickly gets a reward of honor during a fact of heroic weapon during which he will lose his teammate. This event will be the beginning of his new life. He imagines exemplary zeal but will quickly become disillusioned. A bad intuition, a risky combination leading to an illegal investigation and his career quickly share in the trash. Duped, fallen, humiliated. But the call of civic duty, revenge and ways it owes to the deceased teammate will seek redemption. Omnubilé by his last botched investigation, he goes hunting, his own did this time. Everything becomes illegal. His real life, his false identities. But the murky world in which he sails is not illusory him. Crimes of passion, jealousy, large-scale drug trafficking, incest ... From révulsantes discoveries shameful revelations, Underhill sees his mental and physical condition declined face of such horrors. But his determination is stronger than repulsion. Ellroy off the beaten track of the polar by weaving a realistic story where each character is what he hates. Because what interests him is of course the description of this Los Angeles-lowland. Pushing and populated by people whose values have nothing in common with the well-session. It is these sordid characters, pathetic disconnected that matter. The other side of the mirror, studying morals more than a plot yet beautifully-crafted and particularly establishment of bluffing. The beginning of a sociological view of an America he loves as he hates.