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

The plot revolves around a murder mystery set in Los Angeles in the 1940s. They found an unidentified young woman disemboweled and mutilated in a vacant lot. The two detectives, both ex-boxers, become obsessed with the case to where they literally destroy their own lives to solve the case.

As much as I wanted to enjoy The Black Dahlia, I found it to be a dull novel trying to be a stylistic breakthrough in crime fiction writing. Is it possible to write a crime fiction novel with no suspense at all? Active 2: The novel portrays the worst aspects of human nature and the dark side of LA in the 40s, with gross ambiance. The writing style was praised for its fast pace, but it's overrated with too much slang and testosterone-filled dialogue, lacking suspense and story building. That’s not my cup of tea. I prefer quality writing, even if it’s not “innovative”. ( )

Wow. This book is a mind-fuck. And that epilogue about the Hillickers? That completely shocked me, how the author would say those things about his life. Wow. ( )