"I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backwards, seeking only facts."

So begins 'The Black Dahlia' , a novel loosely based upon a real case, the murder of Elizabeth Short that the press nicknamed the Black Dahlia. She was born in Boston in 1924 and was murdered in Los Angeles in 1947. Her case became famous because her body was horribly mutilated and is still unsolved. Ellroy uses the case as a basis to write a complex story of Los Angeles in the 1940s.

Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, our narrator, is a former boxer and LAPD officer. Bucky is the son of a German immigrant who doesn’t hide his racist tendencies and during WWII agreed to give his Japanese neighbours up to keep his job with the LAPD. Lee Blanchard is another ex-boxer and LAPD officer famous for solving a hold-up case and then shacking up with the criminal’s girlfriend, Kay, after the trial.

As semi-famous former boxers, they are asked by their bosses to fight against each other to promote a bill that will increase the wages of all of LAPD's staff. They agree to it and the fight is highly publicized earning them the nicknamed 'Fire' and 'Ice'. After the bout they become patrol partners and they form a bond based upon mutual respect as well as a shared love of Kay. They find themselves attached to the taskforce dedicated to solving the Betty Short murder.

As Ellroy follows the thread of a murder investigation he also shows corruption and power politics prevalent in the LAPD, he takes pleasure in describing brothels, underground lesbian meeting points and seedy hotels. He describes the almost routine violence against suspects and police procedures, they will do almost anything to get a conviction. He also takes the reader to rich neighbourhoods where cruelty and ugliness is present behind polished manners, greed. sex and betrayal in a burgeoning city where aspiring actresses often live an existence of hopelessness prey for powerful men.

This novel is about friendship and obsession and how they can sometimes blind us to what is right in front of us. In some respects I found it a difficult book to read; the 'good guys' are corrupt, violent, drug-fuelled misogynists whilst the 'bad guys' hide their own vices behind a veneer of respectability. I realised very early on into this book that the real-life crime is still unsolved and was curious to discover if Ellroy would make his characters solve it, and was curious as to know what would happen to Bucky once it came to it's conclusion one way or the other. But whilst this is undoubtedly a powerful piece of writing that started really well I came away from it feeling somewhat short-changed. In the end I simply got fed up with all the gore and sleaze, whilst the final chapters was a rather bizarre kitsch noir. What was Bucky on? ( )

James Ellroy wrote this book in order for him to tell his own story about Elizabeth Short or The Black Dahlia. Elizabeth is found in a vacant lot in January 1947. She was mutilated, tortured, murdered, cut in half and dumped in the course of two horrendous days. Using real-life people, and some fictional characters, Ellroy has shown us what probably happened to Elizabeth Short, who was The Black Dahlia. The story is about two young policemen who become involved in the investigation of the Black Dahlia's murder, and it depicts how this event shaped and changed their lives. Both men become totally absorbed and the book shows how their lives were forever changed and sent spinning off the rails from this one horrific murder. When I read Ellroy's final words on the book, I found that he too, in his own way, was obsessed by the Dahlia, even though he was born just after she died. He explains that it was almost a parallel story of what actually happened to his own mother in the 1950's. The book is graphic and explicit, but at the same time it shows the strength and goodness that is in some people as opposed to the absolute derangement of others. It depicts the psychotic mind as well as or better than any other book I've read about this. This book is as noir as any book can get. It's full of obsessions, lies, psychoses, sex, torture and murder. For anyone with a queasy stomach, the book might be way too much to take. For me it was like climbing into a tub of bathtub gin, and not coming up for air until I finished the book. it actually wrung me out, but I kept turning pages. No one does crime like James Ellroy, and nobody does it with so explicitly, and with so much aplomb. In a James Ellroy world, just about anything is possible, and the tension does not leave until the very end of the book. So expect the unexpected, be prepared for some pretty horrific scenarios, get angry and frustrated with the main characters, and fall into the world of post-war LA. ( )

A rare 5 star review for a detective story. The book read like Raymond Chandler on steroids. Hard boiled 1940's dialogue with the sex and violence that RC inferred. More dense and less dependence on sense of place though the seedier parts of LA and Tijuana brought you in, front and center. Threads and layers were many and well meshed with an ending that kept twisting. Rarely did I stop and think of "who was that" or miss a storyline. Bucky and Lee and Kay and the rest were almost outrageous but I bought into their desperation. JE wrote it well with dialogue and references set it in post war America that would be scowled at in these more "sensitive" times. JE really seemed to feel the heartbeat of that time and place. ( )

This one has definitely broadened my sense of what hard-boiled fiction can do. Unlike Chandler and Hammett, Ellroy gets the reader neck-deep in the moral turpitude of 1940s LA.

The sordid details can distract from the plot at times, but I did end up deeply invested in the monster behind Short's murder. Bucky's tone is severe, his accounts graphic, and for this reason I missed the humour of voices such as, for instance, Philip Marlowe. I finished this in a few sittings, feverishly reading it not out of a sense of suspense, but out of a morbid desire for closure; an antidote for all the sickness. ( )

Signed