True Confessions: A Novel.

DUNNE, John Gregory [Joan Didion].

Item Number: 100990

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977.

First edition of this work, basis for the film, with the screenplay by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication, “For Noel Smith- In hopes that this provides a pleasurable moment or two. Best regards, John Gregory Dunne 3 November 1977.” Additionally signed by Joan Didion above Dunne’s inscription. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Neil Stuart. Design by Guy Fleming. Photograph by Nancy Ellison. It was the basis for the 1981 film True Confessions, directed by Ulu Grosbard and starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall. Dunne co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Joan Didion.

In 1940s Los Angeles, an unidentified murder victim is found bisected in a shadowy lot. A catchy nickname is given her in jest—"The Virgin Tramp"—and suddenly a "nice little homicide that would have drifted off the front pages in a couple of days" becomes a storm center. Two brothers, Tom and Des Spellacy, are at the heart of this powerful novel of Irish-Catholic life in Southern California just after World War II. Played in the film version by Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro respectively, Tom is a homicide detective and Des is a priest on the rise within the Church. The murder investigation provides the background against which are played the ever changing loyalties of the two brothers. Theirs is a world of favors and fixes, power and promises, inhabited by priests and pimps, cops and contractors, boxers and jockeys and lesbian fight promoters and lawyers who know how to put the fix in. A fast-paced and often hilarious classic of contemporary fiction, True Confessions is about a crime that has no solutions, only victims. More important, it is about the complex relationship between Tom and Des Spellacy, each tainted with the guilt and hostility that separate brothers. Novelist Thomas H. Cook included True Confessions among his list of 10 best mystery books, calling it "one of the most movingly redemptive novels I have ever read."