Rating: 
Summary: 100% proof pulp fiction
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Hello Dahlia!
Review: Los Angeles has more than its share of renowned homicides, and the murder afficionado can spend many a pleasant (!) weekend here visiting landmarks and chasing ghosts. The Brown/Goldman murders are of the most recent vintage, but there was also Marilyn Monroe, George Reeves, Thelma Todd, RFK - this is just a partial list. But the brutal 1947 slaying of the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, might head the list or finish a close second to Brown/Goldman (the "O.J. case"). At the time that this novel was written, however, its narrative might already have been superceded by events since the Los Angeles Police Department reportedly paid a visit to a suspect in the Dahlia slaying as recently as 1981 and found him dead in a flophouse hotel (shades of Scotland Yard and Montague John Druitt in December 1888). Nevertheless, no one was ever brought to trial for the Dahlia's murder, so the case is still regarded in the public eye as "unsolved". And no more appropriate author could be chosen for a fictitious treatment of the Black Dahlia murder than James Ellroy, the master of the "noir" story, though this 1987 novel is a fairly early example of it. Told from the viewpoint of boxing cop, Bucky Bleichert, the story of the Dahlia murder and investigation is very much colored by the triangle connecting Bleichert with his buddy and pugilistic partner, Lee Blanchard, and the woman whose love they both share. It really does help to live in the Los Angeles area to fully appreciate this story and the time in which it is set. For the most part, since the end of World War II, Los Angeles has followed the path traveled by other major cities - time, regression, culture clash and massive immigration have turned much of it into a slum or Third World country. Yet, the dirty back alley on 39th and Norton where the Dahlia's mutilated corpse was found no longer exists, and the area has evolved into a decent residential neighborhood, bucking the regressive trend. There's one scene where Bleichert follows up on a tip and cruises the 11000 block of Ventura Boulevard (he uses the Cahuenga Pass to get there from the downtown station, presumably because the 101 Freeway does not yet exist), visiting a number of lezzie bars. I presume that Ellroy did his research, but it's hard to look at the usual urban assortment of bideaway motels, strip malls, restaurants, and shops that are in the area now and consider that this block ever harbored anything as outre as a lezzie bar. The social climate is also different from today’s, of course, especially in the police station. Los Angeles cops are portrayed as being even more vile, crude, and corruptible in 1947 than they are today, if that's possible, though the city seems to run smoothly enough under the kind attention of mobster Mickey Cohen. Bleichert isn't that much different from the others, but he's just different enough to earn empathy from the reader. I suppose that's my main criticism of this novel - of ANY Ellroy story: the fact that Ellroy is always cutting out the black heart of the post-war era and shoving it, ventricles and all, into his readers' faces. If you're like me, you treasure the post WW2 era as a Renaissance era in which Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley stirred the juices of American youth; America stood strong and proud under Ike; the three greatest centerfielders in baseball all played within a few miles of each other in the same metropolitan area; and millions of housewives, without any thought of "self actualization" through a career of their own, were staying home and raising strong and healthy families. If that's too idyllic, then Ellroy errs in the opposite direction, showing us too much of the harshness and racial divisiveness of this period. In fact, there MUST have been millions of families with lifestyles similar to that of the Cleavers and thousands of cops as upright as Joe Friday, but Ellroy scarcely hints at their existence. The only visible character living the "squarejohn" life is Bleichert's supervisor, the affable family man and "good cop", Lieutenant Russ Millard, who regularly greets a picture of Elizabeth Short hanging in his office with the promise "I'll get him, dear". But his presence casts a very dim light through the sleaze that is otherwise displayed in Ellroy's conception of the Los Angeles Police Department. The novel suffers from the absence of a more visible "squarejohn" presence and the welcome contrast that this would provide, but the author's noir style is incapable of
accommodating such a presence, and the reader must shrug his shoulders and take Ellroy as he finds him. As the dedication notes, this novel was actually written as a "benediction in blood" to Ellroy's own mother, who also died brutally, and where Ellroy really shines is the way in which he is able to magnify and enshrine the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, whom we never even meet while she is alive. A story simply repeating the canard about a wanna-be actress who found fame in death that she could never find in Hollywood while she was alive would have been too banal for Ellroy and an insufficient tribute to his mother. It is remarkable to instead behold how the Dahlia's presence becomes so powerful AFTER her death as to utterly envelope the lives of those connected with the investigation of it. By novel's end, she has metamorphosed into a goddess, reaching to touch Bleichert's outstretched hand in a noir novel version of the famous Michelangelo painting. It was not narcissistic love of his own artistry that caused Ellroy to weep as he wrote the ending.
Rating:
Summary: Ellroy's Rise Begins
Review: "The Black Dahlia" by James Ellroy is the first book in his LA Quartet. Considered the weakest of the four books, it is still an astounding work of fiction. Written from the first person perspective of detective Bucky Bleichert, the book heads into the darkest places of men's souls, the obsessions that can overtake us, and the ugliness that can exist below the most beautiful of surfaces. I think this book has some of the best charachter development of Ellroy's career, save for Danny upshaw in "The Big Nowhere". I say this because the people in this book, while every one of them flawed, are genuinely decent. Ellroy's charachters would get darker and more depraved, but here there is still a goodness to them that is almost totally gone by the time he wrote "The Cold Six Thousand". While not as wrentching a tour-de-force as "The Big Nowehere", or as ambitious as "LA Confidential" or "American Tabliod", "The Black Dahlia" is an essential piece of crime fiction that establishes Ellroy as a force to be reckoned with.
Rating:
Summary: Magnetic!
Review: This is the first Ellroy novel I've read but it certainly won't be the last. It is based on the real life 1940's slaughter of the would-be actress Elizabeth Short. Ellroy does a thorough job of introducing the main characters involved and focusing on them terrifically while also making the story unbearably suspenseful. If you're craving twists and turns, unyielding obsession, and an ending that isn't abrupt in the least, you've come to the right place.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Bleak
Review: James Ellroy is simply amazing. He writes about bad men doing bad things and occasionally finding or trying for some sort of redemption. He has an amazing command of period slang and idiom. The way he weaves historical events and people with the fictional plots and characters of his books it phenomenal. This one is especially tied to real events and people. As the title implies, it's about two cops becoming obsessed with solving the Black Dahlia murder of the late 1940s. There's a lot more to this, though. The book is strongly informed by Ellroy's feelings about the still-unsolved murder of his mother when he was young.
Rating:
Summary: A Valediction in Blood
Review: The woman is severed, the two halves of her pale, bloodless body placed as carefully in a Los Angeles lot as one would hang a painting in an art gallery. Her face bears a camprichico smile, battered sunken eyes, a pulped nose. Cigarette burns stubble her breasts, one of which is still attached by only a gristle of meat. Beneath the rib cage, nothing. She is disassembled. Her second half begins above her pubic bone, her legs spread in a necrophiliac's wet dream pose, an open gash like an arrow pointing towards her vagina. Her knees are broken and a triangle of flesh is missing from her left thigh. We can easily read the secrets she will never tell: days of unspeakable torture, and, in her portrait photos, of dreams deformed into horror. She is the Black Dahlia, a young woman named Elizabeth Short, and her murderer will never be found. James Ellroy's 1987 novel The Black Dahlia is the masterful crime writer's fictional account of this famous Hollywood murder case, complete with a wish-fulfilling conclusion. It's a relelentlessly intense pulp novel, bursting at the seams with violence, perversion, macho aggression (and weakness), and the gutter-glimmer of a Hollywood buried beneath nearly 60 years of history. Ellroy would begin his four-novel "Los Angeles Quartet" with this work (which actually pales in comparison with the following works: The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and White Jazz). Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, two young LA cops with ambition, haunted pasts, and a living woman between them. Each man becomes obsessed with the alluring Betty Short-- the images of her glamour photos in her tight black dresses and pale blue eyes as well as the gruesome images of the famous corpse she would come to be-- and finds his life in disarray because of it. All of the LAPD is on the case as the largest manhunt in the state's history gathers to find Betty Short's murderer-- but in the end only one man will be strong enough to handle-- or, indeed, care-- about the truth. Ellroy rubs our noses in the grit and the dirt of investigating the murder of a beautiful girl on the skids; as Bucky and Lee roust lowlifes in LA's warzones you can smell the cheap liquor, the stench of bum urine, feel the California heat as it shimmers on the blacktop, your bourbon hangover gripping your skull like a vice as you try to slice through inter-departmental bull, politics and the lies, to find out who killed a worthless two-bit beautiful piece of cheap Hollywood cooze. Atmosphere is heavy with neon, rain-slicked streets at night and reeking bachelor pads, sunlight filtered through venetian blinds, men and women frozen in a time we can only imagine as film noir. The dialogue is realistic and filled with the period slang of bebop jazz and cop-talk. The plot twists and turns, with a long jaunt to filthy Mexico graveyard, where Bucky literally digs up his past; to the early Hollywood machinations of (real-life) Keystone Kops director Mack Sennett and mobster Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen. Lee Blanchard disappears, leaving Bucky to fend off three women: Kay Lake, who loved Lee; Madeliene Sprague, a Dahlia-lookalike; and the Black Dahlia herself, who even in death casts a spell over men. Ellroy ends his novel with the killer caught; the Black Dahlia's final hours revealed in gut-wrenching detail ("She bit on the gag and blood from where I took the Joe DiMaggio to her teeth came out due to her biting so hard. I stuck the knife down to a little bone I felt, then I twisted it"); one of the most famous of all unsolved murder mystery cases finally laid to rest. The climax is drawn out over the final thirty pages in a jagged wave of secrets uncovered and killers come forth. Ellroy gives you your money's worth, that's for sure. This novel is so dark it's almost a classic horror novel; horror not in the sense of Stephen King but in the true sense of the word: awe at the depths to which humanity can sink and how it stains all our lives. Ellroy calls this book his "Valediction in Blood" and it's easy to see why: his own mother was killed by an unknown man, and in The Black Dahlia, he has solved one murder for another. RIP.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book...but NOT about the Black Dahlia.
Review: James Ellroy is unquestionably a great writer and this book is one of his best, but don't make the mistake I made in reading this book to learn about the infamous Black Dahlia murder. Ellory uses the murder only as a backdrop to tell a story of two L.A. cops and police corruption in the '40s. It's really a shame this book is called "The Black Dahlia", but one wonders if it would have been as successful if it had been called "Bucky & Lee." What little the reader learns about the Dahlia (aka Elizabeth Short) all pretty much comes out of Ellroy's feverish imagination. To be fair, Ellroy wrote this book back before much was really known about Elizabeth Short, ... Still, it's a powerful book and one I'd recommend as a police drama. But for the facts of the case I'd recommend SEVERED: THE TRUE STORY OF THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER by John Gilmore or CHILDHOOD SHADOWS by Mary Pacios (SEVERED being the better of the two books in my opinion). And please, Hollywood, don't use the Ellroy book when you finally get around to making a Black Dahlia movie. She deserves better.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic read-- if you can handle it!
Review: Mr. Ellroy has done it again. Let me explain: I have read "L.A. Confidential" and "Hollywood Noctournes." Both were exquisite pieces of noir fiction which I rated with 5 stars as well, however "The Black Dahlia" takes the cake. This book is fully of dogdy characters that you would never want to meet in a dark alley, or have in your jury box. Elizabeth Short portrayed by the likes of Ellroy will leave you hanging onto his every word... wanting more, craving more, delving into that deep psychotic tendency that only pure noir writers can fathom, and leaving you breathless. Cornell Woolrich is my personal favorite for noir fiction, but Ellroy is far more disturbed. Can you handle the seedy side of lesbianism, drugs, Tijuana murders, Victor Hugo, slashed bodies, prostitutes, pornography, all mixed in with a love triangle between two best friends who are LAPD partners, boxing adversaries, and fighters for the love of a woman that was pulled from the gutter? The plot twist and turns down many a grimy alleyway, surefire fun for hellcats of all shapes and sizes. This is the kind of story where everything should be kept "hush-hush.. on the QT.. and strictly confidential." Let us just say that I will be reading "The Big Nowhere" and "White Jazz" to finish off the "L.A. Quartet" by James Ellroy. His dark side shows through.. these characters will not leave you anytime soon after reading this masterpiece of modern noir fiction. I hope to God that I never have to deal with anyone like the characters in this book. I can only wish you a pleasant journey to the seedy world of 1940s city of angels.
Rating:
Summary: Keep A Stiff Drink Handy When You ReadThis Book
Review: All I can say about the Black Dahlia is that it's go fo broke vision of obsession, sex and death will leave you shaken, amazed, and thirsty for a stiff drink of that something that burns going down. Ellroy's fictional investigation into LA's most notorious and very non fiction unsolved murder is part "Apocalypse Now," part "Chinatown," and all darkness.
Rating:
Summary: The Black Dahlia
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. Ellroy builds strong atmosphere and his characters are very strong and belivable. His style of writing is complex and I don't think everybody can enjoy it. Some people can stand it, and I'm aware of it. But it is easier to follow then "The Big Nowhere" and has a relativly happy ending.
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