The Los Angeles Book Prizes announced that it will honor crime writer James Ellroy with a 2022 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. The award recognizes a writer whose work focuses on the American West.

Los Angeles native Ellroy is perhaps best known for his L.A. Quartet novels (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz), but has penned several works over the past four decades including his memoir My Dark Places (1997), the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover), and the first two books of the Second L.A. Quartet (Perfidia and This Storm).

“We are pleased to recognize L.A. noir iconoclast James Ellroy with this year’s Kirsch Award,” said Times Books Editor Boris Kachka. “James’ writing life was shaped by the tragic, unsolved murder of his mother when he was 10, fostering an obsession with crime and the underworld that has animated his fiction and nonfiction across the decades.”

MYSTERY/THRILLER FINALISTS

We Lie Here, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)
Back to the Garden, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
All That's Left Unsaid, by Tracey Lien (William Morrow)
Secret Identity, by Alex Segura (Flatiron Books)
The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd (William Morrow)

Category Judges: Oline Cogdill, SJ Rozan, and Paula L. Woods

The Book Prizes recognize 56 remarkable works in 12 categories, celebrating the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers. Winners will be announced in a ceremony on Friday, April 21 at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, the evening before the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, taking place the weekend of April 22-23, 2023.