ABSTRACT
Anyone who's read James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential or his novella Dick Contino's Blues has noticed the name Spade Cooley strung through the fictional text. Ellroy's vivid, mostly fictionalized characterization may have given readers pause. In fact, the noir master had good reason to seed Cooley throughout his dark backstreet world, for the fiddler-bandleader paved the way for the celebrity murder suspects of recent years.
