[Ellroy's] unique qualities as a crime writer are well captured, and cogently analysed, in The Big Somewhere … I think that anyone who is a serious Ellroy fan will find The Big Somewhere insightful and interesting.

Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

The introduction alone making for fascinating reading … with these essays one gains a greater insight into how influential he has been, and continues to be so.

Shots Magazine

I can do no better than recommend The Big Somewhere … [A] fascinating piece of scholarship.

Getting Away with Murder

Steven Powell is fast becoming the authority on James Ellroy, and this excellent edited collection consolidates and enhances this reputation. The essays, uniformly high-quality and wide-ranging in scope, bring together key scholars in the field and offer complex, exciting ways of understanding Ellroy's entire body of work and the contexts that have produced it. Taken as a whole, this immaculately put-together book should be essential reading for anyone with an interest in Ellroy, crime fiction and post-WW2 American culture.

Andrew Pepper, Senior Lecturer in English, Queen's University Belfast, UK

Pull down the top of your Eldorado and prepare for a ride through the Big Somewhere, aka the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Steven Powell and his colleagues are ready and able to guide you, and they're not afraid of Ellroy's dark places.

Richard B. Schwartz, Professor of English and Dean of the College of Arts and Science Emeritus, University of Missouri, USA, and author of Nice and Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction (2002)

[Ellroy's] unique qualities as a crime writer are well captured, and cogently analysed, in The Big Somewhere … I enjoyed reading this book, (and not only because of the absence of tedious footnotes in tiny print!). I think that anyone who is a serious Ellroy fan will find The Big Somewhere insightful and interesting.

Martin Edwards, Do You Write Under Your Own Name Blog