- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Arrow (3 Jan 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099366517
- ISBN-13: 978-0099366515
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 2.4 x 19.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 23,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Independent
'The outstanding crime writer of his generation'
Review
" 'A mesmerising study of psycho-sexual obsession - extraordinarily well written' - The Times. 'One of those rare, brilliantly written books you want to press on other people' - Time Out. 'A unique voice in American crime writing' - Sunday Telegraph. 'Turgid with passion, violence and frustration-imaginative and bizarre' - Los Angeles Times"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If, as a non-initiate, you stop and try to understand it, James Ellroy's writing style will have you completely bamboozled. The way to approach it is to barrel through it at a hundred miles an hour - that's the pace it was intended to be read at - and eventually everything will start making sense by itself. Even if it doesn't there is still something exhilarating about the way James Ellroy writes: it's a guilty pleasure, and Black Dahlia features some of his best writing. If after a while you really find yourself struggling, just google on "Ellroy Glossary" and you'll pick up any number of fanzine crib sheets.
Once you get the hang of the Ellroy idiom it's quite addictive and you even start talking like that yourself a bit. Which is embarrassing.
As with all Ellroy novels I've read, in Black Dahlia the streets are mean, the characters morally bankrupt, and the plot so byzantine as to implicate every one from the chief of police to some Mexican pornographers. This is very much Ellroy's world view: fundamentally we are all ugly, and the worst of us are the ones who pretend we're not. It's very Thomas Hobbes, actually.
The plot scenario is very similar to L.A. Confidential - two cops with a strange interpersonal relationship and a common squeeze on the hunt for the perpetrator of a dastardly crime. But while the crime is much more brutal, the book itself is not so dark. Sure it isn't Ogden Nash, but it (and especially the Ellroy Lingo) frequently had me sniggering as I read. Maybe I'm just desensitised to Ellroy's morbid style.
I think the danger with Ellroy is to read too much into it; the patios is so convincing it is easy to mistake this for something deeper than it is: like Quentin Tarantino, Ellroy is the first to admit his art really is pulp fiction, despite what the critical luvvies say.
But look, bottom line, it's a cracking read, and that's all you really need to know.
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
In 'book noir' circles, the very stylish Ellroy is cult king - there surely is nobody quite like him. Hard to believe that he didn't actually live through the real-life experience of the infamous Black Dahlia murder of 1947 but Ellroy himself wasn't born until 1948. He dedicated this masterpiece to his mother, who was murdered in LA in 1958, her killer never being found. Perhaps this defining moment in the writer's life is the key to his obsession about those dark days of crime and corruption (on both sides of the law) in the twilight years of Hollywood's Golden Age.
As a background, Ellroy himself was a young man haunted by his mother's ghost; he became a thief, an alcoholic, a drug abuser and a sexual pervert who became notorious as a peeping Tom fixated on women's underwear. He broke into people's houses, he stole stuff, things like food and lingerie. He served time in jail. He declared himself to be a Nazi to get a rise out of people. Thankfully he eventually channelled his energies into writing, and what a gift he has given us.
This first of the author's famed 'LA Quartet' is based on the notorious murder of the young, beautiful and promiscuous Elizabeth Short, who has been found cut in half, disemboweled and bearing evidence that she had been tortured for several days before dying. Dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press, the victim becomes an obsession for two LAPD cops, narrator Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and his partner, Lee Blanchard, both ex-boxers who also happen to be best friends and in love with the same woman. Despite a huge and highly publicised investigation, things go nowhere, and Bucky causes himself problems by sleeping with the casually bisexual Madeleine Sprague (daughter of a corrupt real-estate tycoon) who knew "the Dahlia" and slept with her once; he knows he has suppressed vital evidence in the case. With bent cops all around him Bucky fears for his life, but such is his all-consuming obsession with bringing the killer to justice that he eventually sets out on a personal vendetta and painstakingly recreates the last few days of Betty Short's life, eventually digging up new witnesses and evidence that the official investigation failed to discover.
This is a superb mixture of dark fact and even darker fiction, no doubt fuelled by Ellroy's life-long desire to find his own mother's killer and an outstanding example of ambition, insanity, passion and deceit, not to mention sexual obsession, set against the background of a booming, post-war Los Angeles.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is unforgettable literature. It both defines and transcends the genre. Hugely evocative of an age. Beautifully crafted characters. Stark horror. Dialogue like broken glass. The scene-setting boxing story and the dynamic between the three lead characters is incredibly poignant, and provides a more human dimension to the narrator than is usually on show in Ellroy's leading men. The red-meat-and-healthy-living also provided a counterpoint to the gothic gore. While the plot is by no means straightforward, it is satisyingly self-conatined, and rather less sprawling than the remainder of the LA quartet. Whereas horror and evil in those novels is embodied by Dudley Smith, in the Black Dahlia the horror seeps out of the body itself, corrupting all who come near her. This book sows the seed of the American Nightmare that is graphically illustrated in bloom in the remainder of the quartet through to the Cold Six Thousand. Ellis Loew is an excelllent villain, and Russ Millard a saint driven to distraction. Quite simply the best crime novel I have yet to read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Maid in hell? Pitch Noir.
I am not a child of the 50's or 40s, but Elroy manages to imbue all his novels with a compelling view/flavour of the era he writes about. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Man from poundstretcher
Hollywood Babylon
Ellroy has drawn deeply on his own dramatic, disturbing life story in creating this novelisation of the infamous "Black Dahlia" L.A. murder. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Catananche
shocked by the praise
I dont understand how this book got soo much praise. Its unlikley, contrived and awkward. The story fell apart from the beggining. Read more
Published 10 months ago by JP Review
Good Slice of Noir, Shame About the Ending
James Ellroy's fictional take on the real murder of Elizabeth Short comes as the first novel in his LA Quartet. Read more
Published 11 months ago by silvershakespeare
The only thing that is a crime is this book
After struggling to read this book for about 3 months I finally came to the end and wish I hadn't bothered, it was a total bore, the story line was rubbish, the characters rubbish,... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Ms. R. E. Winfield
Noir revival
Can pastiche be as good as the original product? The Black Dahlia proves that it can. This is a great thriller in its own right: set in L.A. Read more
Published 17 months ago by reader 451
A Dark Los Angeles
James Ellroy's stunning "Black Dahlia" creates a sense of insecurity, darkness and deep psychological problems. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Sean Wilson-blake
Fabulous book
I read the reviews before about the book being better than the film.I think they are right - not that the film was that bad! Read more
Published 20 months ago by S. Holmes
Dark brilliance
'The Black Dahlia' is a crime novel of exceptional darkness and exceptional brilliance. Set in the US in the 1940s, the story is narrated from the perspective of Dwight 'Bucky'... Read more
Published 22 months ago by THE Music Enthusiast
Not for the faint hearted
Well, I am sorry to rate this book so low when so many seem to love it - but I think people need to be warned! Read more
Published 22 months ago by Tiffany
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