L.A. has got to be America's, if not the world's (sorry Paris), preeminent city of noir. And now the contemporary master of noir-lit, James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia) is bringing the city's dark side to television with James Ellroy's LA: City of Demons.

It comes to ID: Investigation Discovery Jan. 19, according to the Franklin Avenue blog. (Licks chops).

The six-episode show will look at real-life cases through the eyes of Ellroy, police, prosecutors and even jurors.

Shows will cover the 1958 homicide of Ellroy's own mom (which he touches on in his latest, The Hilliker Curse), the mob-vs.-the LAPD, serial killers and the Hillside Strangler(s).

"Crime is a palpitatingly perennial gas - and L.A. crime is the craaaazy creme-de-la-crime," Ellroy says in a Discovery statement. "Viewers are terribly tired of the trailer trash tragedies that caustically contaminate documentary TV. They wantonly want to groove, grok, gravitate and glide toward glamorous crime - and L.A. is where all that shimmering sh...stuff...pervertedly percolates. This show will be serious, satirical and great fun."

Cannot wait.