The Black Dahlia

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Summary: The Black Dahlia Murder or James Ellroy -- Which is SCARIER?
Review: This was the fourth Ellroy I've read and also one of his earliest. His style is more clipped and nasty in his later works. This book shows signs of elaborate passages and less dialogue. However, the elements are all there: brutal murder; more brutal investigation; characters of dubious morals; backstabbing and double crosses; and cases in which nothing (especially the people)is what it seems. Try LA CONFIDENTIAL or AMERICAN TABLOID after this. You should be well prepared.

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Summary: A Tensely Thrilling Tale
Review: Fans of Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, film noir, and mysteries in general will love this book. Ellroy's style is fast-paced and thrilling; the novel is impossible to put down. The ending might strike some as over the top, but I was too enthralled to notice; Ellroy is such a tense and engaging storyteller that I am willing to follow his characters from LA to Tijuana to Mars. The characters -- morally shady, complex, human -- are wonderfully developed as well. That the novel is based on the actual Dahlia case adds an especially unnerving tone, making it a eerie and engrossing read that will haunt you long after it ends.

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Summary: Pulp-ish fiction, but good
Review: I rarely read a book like this but I picked this one up after I found out he wrote the book that LA Confidential (the movie) was based on. The style is pure film noir and, while this style has been done by many, Ellroy marks his own style. Written with twists and turns galore, the book is extremely engaging. I couldn't put the thing down. He does a great job of bringing his characters to life and (for me) more importantly making the time and place feel like reality. My only complaints are two things he employs that I feel are the primary annoying aspects of most popular fiction. First, the use of sex scenes as some kind of emotional release even when there is no established connection between the two people. Second, the ending of a chapter at a critical point only to move onto other characters and another event so as to keep us holding our breaths.

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Summary: Obsession with Betty
Review: Perhaps you need to know that Ellroy wept upon completion of "Dahlia". Indeed you must know that I wept as turned the last page of the story of the brief life and brutal death of Elizabeth, aka Betty, Short, and the fictional tale of the investigation of her murder. I cried at being freed from the clutches of this magnificent but deeply traumatic story. For what this novel is about is obsession. And the release from obsession. If you read "My Dark Places" you will understand where this story comes from, how it took hold of Ellroy, how the ghosts of his mother and her killer inhabit every page, and how writing "Dahlia" began to exorcise the demons that possesed Ellroy, from child to man, for twenty years. Understand how the obsession was finally released. But also, know from me, that I picked up "The Black Dahlia" late one evening, and read, hooked, gripped, unable to stop, not eating, not noticing the world around me, not talking to anyone, in silence and in darkness but for a reading lamp, for eight hours. Beginning to end. Held by the power of this obsession, until blinking with tired eyes I turned off the lamp, and in the grey light of dawn, emotionally received the authors resolution. Not an ending that brought justice, heaped revenge or pondered despair, but an ending that evinced acceptance, spoke of love and looked outward from within, towards destiny. I cried. Great waves of sadness, hope, even a kind of spirituality broke over me. Even today, I find it difficult to express the profound hold this novel had over me for that moment in time, and I find it difficult to think of another work, particularly in modern fiction, that I have found so completely arresting. And if you think I thought this was good, don't ask me about "American Tabloid"!

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Summary: Slow start...strong finish...
Review: This book has a slow and confusing beginning (the two main character's last names are confusingly simmilar), but Ellroy makes up for it in the end. The plot is great and the suspense is wonderful. I highly reccommend this book!

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Summary: a serpent feeding on its tail
Review: Ellroy masterfully creates an ammoral, cruel, predatory, self-consuming late-forties Los Angeles in *The Black Dahlia*. If you read the book, you'll see that the murder of the Black Dahlia and the nature of the corpse, once discovered, is the novel's central metaphor. The novel explores the human bowels of darkness and just as the people in this story consume and devour one another, the novel's plot becomes more and more focused as the story begins to devour itself. If you lean toward movies like *Seven* or *The Cook, the Thief, etc* or any other stories of disembowelment and dismemberment, this book is for you.

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Summary: A masterpiece...like every novel he has written since
Review: Some just don't get it. If you're going to recommend James Lee Burke as an alternative, then Ellroy is not for you. Burke is a good writer, but his novels are about piling HEAVY descriptive prose on top of the thinnest hairline of plot. I don't mind reading Vachss, when I feel like being fed a sermon (talk about self-indulgent). Ellroy strips away the fatty narrative, and in return provides more story, more plot, more meat. Some folks like their vegetables, some like chicken without the skin...but some like a thick and bloody sirloin that takes a week to digest. For those folks, I recommend this novel, and the Chef's Special: White Jazz. I defy you to find another novel as raw and tasty.

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Summary: SELF-INDULGENT GEEGAW
Review: Sorry, can't join the herd who've swallowed this as good writing. Like AMERICAN PSYCHO, it's got the verbal runs. Good talent at getting words out, no problem there. But what it all means is close to zero. I agree with another reviewer, here is one highly overrated writer. Ellroy has had his two hours of fame. Lets not hog the spotlight, James. Go to sleep, like I do when I try reading your work. Boring. To others, good luck with it.

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Summary: Black Dahlia - loved it!
Review: I came across "Black Dahlia" by a mere coincidence. I was in a bookshop and didn't find anything. I made my way through to the door, when the title of a book in the corner of my eye, caught my attention. "Black Dahlia". I thought to myself that the title sounded familiar. I read the storyline and I bought it. I practically ploughed my way through it and I think it's a FANTASTIC book, especially when considering that it was Ellroy's debut novel. Man, can that guy write or what! I think he has a unique way of maintaining the exitement to the very end, twisting and turning the plot just when you think you have it all figured out. He gives very detailed descriptions and is very horrorfic. I especially love the details such as the person names, places in L.A., the murders. I love the way he describes the corruption and the henchmen-style. The whole milieu noir. I simply loved the book. And when I was done reading it, I went straight down and bought "The Big Nowhere", "L.A. Confidential" and "White Jazz".

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Summary: Brutal, but not that believable
Review: I believe that James Ellroy's work makes for better movie fodder than simple reading, as long as there's a skilled director to make more rounded portrayals of his characters and streamline the plot. Curtis Hanson's movie version of "L.A. Confidential" is an astounding version of an Ellroy book. "The Black Dahlia" is a pungent, police detective story set in L.A. in the late 40s. Ellroy is great at setting moods and describing places in time (he paints a far simpler, yet in some ways more seedy and hateful, Los Angeles than the modern version). However, his noirish dialogue is pretty clunky to read, his characters a bit caricaturistic and overwrought, and the plot takes weird, twisted turns that seem pretty implausible at times. As the book wears on, the plot gets stranger and the scenes of gore and depravity get nastier. Ellroy is brilliant at describing what a mutilated, cut in half, and blood-drained female body looks like, but after about the 30th such description you may find yourself saying "enough! I get the point!" Definitely an enjoyable read for detective and police genre devotees, a mixed bag for others. I do, however, greatly admire Ellroy's archivist, almost obsessive sense of history, especially his vast knowledge of the history of crime in L.A. (of course, having his mother die a brutal death there in the 1950s might have had something to do with it)