Works:
Works by
(b. 1932)John Gregory Dunne
| 1977 | True Confessions. The longtime California resident's first bestseller is a hard-boiled police novel written in the manner of Raymond Chandler. It is praised for both its humor and its sharply observed depiction of Los Angeles in the 1940s and Irish-Catholic family dynamics. Dunne collaborated with his wife, Joan Didion, on screenplays such as Panic in Needle Park (1971), Play It as It Lays (1972), and the adaptation of True Confessions (1981). |
| 1982 | Dutch Shea, Jr. Dutch is an attorney who specializes in defending lowlife characters whom no one else wishes to represent. The plot turns on the killing of Shea's daughter in a London terrorist attack by the Irish Republican Army; it leads to Dutch's own collapse as he become enmeshed in his own embezzlement scheme. Critics consider Dunne a successor to the great hard-boiled detective novelists Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with a profound and affectionate grasp of Irish American life. |
| 1987 | The Red White and Blue. In this ambitious political novel, the plot centers on the Brodericks, a family that loosely resembles the Kennedys. Power games abound both in politics and in the Catholic Church--a subject that Dunne had also covered in True Confessions (1977). While The Red White and Blue lacks the intensity of Dunne's earlier fiction, critics admire the broad canvas of the novel and its shrewd judgments of American institutions. |
| 1990 | Crooning. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Dunne collects some of his best essay-reviews in this volume. His subjects are Hollywood, the American West, and politics. Critics consider Dunne one of the best commentators on contemporary West Coast sensibility. |
| 1997 | Monster: Living off the Big Screen. Dunne, who had cowritten screenplays with his wife, Joan Didion, writes a funny, self-critical memoir of life in Hollywood. Not taking himself too seriously, he documents the stages by which a screenplay he and his wife had cowritten becomes a script for a Robert Redford vehicle, bearing virtually no resemblance to the original they had produced. Critics praise the authority and authenticity of Dunne's account. |
