'My Dark Places' 24 Jan 2009

My Dark Places

Saturday 24 January

8.00-9.00pm BBC WORLD SERVICE

My Dark Places by James Ellroy is dramatised for radio by Steve Chambers.

In the week of the inauguration of the new US President, BBC World Service broadcasts a true story from James Ellroy, one of America's most famous contemporary crime-writers.

Ellroy is the renowned author of The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. My Dark Places is perhaps his most surprising work.

Ellroy was 10 years old when his mother, Jean, was brutally murdered outside a local High School in Los Angeles in 1958. The killer was never found.

In 1994, aged 46 and already a successful crime writer, Ellroy decided to reinvestigate his mother's murder and try to find the killer himself, beginning a journey of discovery which was to have implications he could never have imagined.

The play stars Toby Stephens (Die Another Day) as Ellroy; with Matthew Marsh (Spooks); Corey Johnson; Barbara Barnes; Lorelei King; Kerry Shale; William Hope; Laurel Lefkow; Peter Marinker; and introduces Ethan Brook as the 10-year-old Ellroy.

Director/Marion Nancarrow

BBC World Service Publicity