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The Black Dahlia James Ellroy Books

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The Black Dahlia James Ellroy Books

I am a voracious reader, but even then I usually read no more than 2 chapters a day on any novel. This is probably the first novel I've read in a long time that couldn't let me go. I would tell myself that I read only 1 chapter for the day and then 5 chapters later I was wanting more. It is very hackneyed and cliched to say that the book is better than the movie, but never in my lifetime has this been more true. Ellroy's craft is none like any other in which each simple sentence conveys depth deep within collective id of humanity's psyche.


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The Black Dahlia James Ellroy Books Reviews

My first run at James Ellroy. It's long overdue, since LA Confidential is probably my favorite crime movie of all time.

The Black Dahlia is the first of his "LA Quartet" series, to which LA Confidential also belongs. I'm excited to get into the rest of these now -- I hate to go to cliches, but if ever there was a page-turner, this is one. It's a genre-bending noire centered on the investigation of a pretty nasty 1947 murder in Los Angeles. It's part whodunit, part psychological thriller and part period-based cop procedural.

It's also twisty as hell. The characters follow pretzels rather than arcs but they stay true, and every time you think you're figuring something out or seeing a piece of the bigger picture, it turns out you're looking into a fun house mirror. The first-person narrator is a young cop who wants badly to do the right thing but often doesn't -- you never really know what he's going to do.

So there's a sincere lack of whimsy here, which I'm good with. The cops are rough-edged and at least corrupt-ish, with smart cops, good cops, dumb cops, bully cops... and every possible combination thereof. Even the good ones blatantly break the law repeatedly and sometimes even brutally. The LA/Hollywood setting is dark and mean and mostly crushes dreams for its daily bread. Bigoted vernacular is the only vernacular. It's dark. And occasionally gruesome. And morbid.

And so, so good.
Another brutal story, well told by Ellroy. Like LA Confidential, this may not be to everyone's taste, even to those who enjoy crime and noir, but it's certainly very good at what it is.

Also like LA Confidential, the story is set within the LA Police Department, following two main characters, Bucky Bleichart and Lee Blanchard, through their investigations of a tortured and murdered young woman. There are no angels in the story -- Bleichart and Blanchard lead twisted lives on the point of breaking, and the victim, Elizabeth Short, was broken well before her murder.

The story follows obsessions. Neither Bleichart nor Blanchard is a homicide detective, but, in their own ways, neither can look away from the Short murder. Blanchard's girlfriend, Kay, is drawn into the story as well, with her own twisted and nearly broken background. As the story escalates, so do the obsessions, with a kind of apocalyptic feel for the lives of everyone involved. We follow Bleichart though one more dark layer after another, tied together by Blanchard's advice, "Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that."

In a very revealing Afterword to the book, Ellroy himself describes the story as set among "psychically maimed misfits running from World War II." He also gives us insight into his own obsession with the story, based on a true event -- a story he felt compelled to tell because of his own dark experiences. It's really pretty dark all the way down, from the true event, to the author, to the novel itself.

The characters in the story are constantly tested, and many if not most fail. That's what makes the book both hard to take but also hard to look away from. It tests our baser instincts.
I bought the version, but added the audio to it and ended up listening because of the excellent narration. I am still reeling from the author's powerful prose. Excellent "film noir" atmosphere - the narrator's performance was absolutely superb! His voice was so versatile and compelling, it really made me stick with this book. I know I would have put it down if I was just reading by myself. His voice and the narrative take you right back to the 1940's, right after WWII. The writing is excellent - the subject matter is almost beyond a nightmare, not for faint hearted. The narrative is gritty, somewhat pornographic and definitely not of our politically correct times. I have to admit I found parts of it offensive. It was not easy to listen to, but the dialogue sounded authentic to how policemen must have spoke at the time.
The storyline had so many highs and lows - twists and turns, especially near the end!
This book is a work of fiction, based on two murders, one famous murder of a young woman in California and another murder of the author' s own mother. It's not just a crime drama, it's a study of obsession, guilt and redemption.
I give this a Fair rating. Having researched the facts of the real Black Dahlia murder case after seeing a documentary, I was curious to see how Ellroy's book would treat the story. While the author weaves his own tale using the basic facts of the true story, I was disappointed in the quality of his writing. His prose is trite, to say the least. He endeavors (though not always succeeds) to use period argot and gives authentic descriptions of late 1940s Los Angeles, but I felt his characters were very poorly developed. And the leading character cops, for example, use language that a writer with an education would use, but not likely two prizefighters turned police at that time would be to use. The Black Dahlia of the title is not the main story, so the title is misleading. I have other criticisms as well, such as Ellroy's obvious dislike for law enforcement which permeates the book. I bought two Ellroy books because I liked the film made from L.A. Confidential and wanted to see whether he is an author whose books I would like to read more of. I'll give him another chance when I read L.A. Confidential. I hope he is not another James Patterson, whom I tried and gave up on after reading 2 books which I felt were hopeless junk.
I am a voracious reader, but even then I usually read no more than 2 chapters a day on any novel. This is probably the first novel I've read in a long time that couldn't let me go. I would tell myself that I read only 1 chapter for the day and then 5 chapters later I was wanting more. It is very hackneyed and cliched to say that the book is better than the movie, but never in my lifetime has this been more true. Ellroy's craft is none like any other in which each simple sentence conveys depth deep within collective id of humanity's psyche.