James Ellroy writes the tough-guy crime novels that would make most people shudder. It is tough as nails, darker than Lucifer’s heart and entirely plausible. The book The Black Dahlia is no different.
For those of you who have seen the Academy Award nominated film, you already know the basic plot. Two boxers turned L.A. cops fall onto a case which happens to be one of the biggest unsolved murder cases in California’s real history. The case drives nearly everyone involved or involved with the people investigating it into madness. A madness only hell itself can instill in a person.
The case is the murder of Elizabeth Short, an aspiring starlet with dreams of fame as well as a heart of gold and legs that open for anything. She was last seen alive on January 9, 1947. She was found on January 15, 1947, horribly tortured, completely drained of blood, cut in half at the waist and her lips parted in a perpetual macabre grin due to the cutting of her mouth extending ear to ear literally.
While the book is a fictionalized account of a true crime, it captures the time perfectly. The novel also caught the urgency of the investigation to ensure that this did not happen to other women. It goes into the possible mindsets of the real life investigators without missing a beat. While doing all of this, Ellroy also put into the book a story of combating corruption within the L.A. government and police force. For those of you with exposure to Ellroy’s writing, this book tends to move much slower than the rest of his books. However it manages to throw more into it. This makes it even tougher and harder to handle than the other books in his repertoire.
The imagery puts you right in the action where you can see from the perspective of the narrator (which occasionally changes). It allows you to connect with the characters due to the way the story is written and imagery that is given.
The power of this book ultimately resides in the urgency that the story gives. It makes you love the characters, then turns everything head over heels and makes you despise some of them as well. It brings out a reaction in true noir style that gives you the feeling of a lack of hope that goes with the characters. It’s a strong case of literary neo-noir.
Just get it if you are a fan of the crime novels. James Ellroy’s writing still does not disappoint the audience.