Dwight Bleichert, Los Angeles police officer, became friends with Leland Blanchard, a colleague. The two men work together, they form a good duo cops. Until an investigation will completely disrupt their lives.
January 1947. The body of Elizabeth Short was found, horribly mutilated in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The case caused a stir, and the police, under pressure from the city council, must make every effort to find the murderer. Bleichert and Blanchard are entrusted with the case. They will plunge into the heart of darkness, in search of an elusive killer ...
I see the Black Dahlia as a no man's land grayish. Generally, in the intrigues, the good and evil are clearly defined, and the border between them pretty thin: either a character's nice, or it is bad.
In the Black Dahlia, The Good and Evil are extreme notions, and all the characters in the novel constantly navigating between. Everyone has its dark side, even when a character tries to do good, it ends up hopelessly commit wrongdoing. This is the great strength of the novel: witness the evolution of these characters in this bleak area, no man's land.
James Ellroy takes his time: the author devotes the first 100 pages to detail the beginnings of the relationship between Bleichert and Blanchard. It does not get bored, but we do not see where it is coming from. We would like that the plot starts "really". And the body of Elizabeth Short arises in the plot, and nothing will be as before. We now understand why the novel does not begin with the murder because qu'Ellroy wants support on how it will transform the lives of two cops.
In The Black Dahlia, all layers of society take a hit, no one is innocent. Whether the aristocracy, politicians, authorities, etc. everyone has something to be ashamed of, one way or another. The two main characters will be most affected in this story.
James Ellroy works from real events, but transform reality: the Dahlia case was never solved. Here Ellroy leads to a conclusion, gives a guilty but in the end it really does matter more.
One feels the will of the author to make true, give a profusion of details, it is also one of the faults in its history. It should be read carefully in order not to collapse under the character names. Fortunately here we still leaves without taking notes. But as long as you dropped the book a week or two, it becomes difficult to return. So it will be better to read it in one sitting.
The Black Dahlia is a wonderful book, very black, which did not disappoint me. Soon I will return to this author with The Big Nowhere.
Critique published on my blog: [...]
