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43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Black and Blue, 23 Jun 2005
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.
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by James Ellroy
by James Ellroy
by James Ellroy
by James Ellroy
