Country: USA
Genre: Noir
Pages: 337
Writer: I love James Ellroy. He took a little while to win me over though, I found him to be a little formulaic and gimmicky, but novels like Killer On The Road and L.A Confidential conquered me. His telegraphic style and his fearless creative approach made him a natural for noir fiction. Altough he never won any prizes, Ellroy has always struck me as a driven writer who never gave a damn about honors and awards.
Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Leland C. Blanchard are cops. They are also boxers. In L.A, during World War 2, they are enough of an inspiration for the population going through the hardships of a world scale conflict. Ellis Loew, D.A of Los Angeles uses them as a morale booster for the population before an upcoming election and this way, through confrontation, both guys become friends and soon partners at the Central Warrants division.
Bucky and Lee immediatly connect, but their friendship is darkened by the feelings Bucky has for Lee's girlfriend Kay. Lee and Kay have a troubled relationship, marked by the scare of Kay's ex-pimp Bobby de Witt's parole. Kay seem to love Bucky too, but he doesn't want to step over his partner and nab his girlfriend.
Everything starts falling apart when Bucky & Lee are called to a murder scene where they discover the atrociously mutilated body of Elizabeth Short, who will soon be pegged as "Black Dahlia". The horrible scene sends Lee back to uncomfortable place in his mind, to memories of his younger sister who has been raped and killed while he was a teenager. Ellis Loew, smelling a lifetime-opportunity case, puts his hot shot guys on this case and then it starts spinning out of control.
Lee gets frustrated at the lack of progress and grows restless at the idea of Bobby de Witt's liberation, so he leaves for Tijuana for mysterious reasons and Bucky is facing the case, Kay's loneliness and his own, all at the same time. It gets really complex for there (hell it's a complex story), but I can't explain any further without spoiling.
Ellroy's prose is what so great about him. He's got that rugged style where he chopps the connecting words and keeps sentences up to a street level of slang that is more realistic than what many other writers can only hope for. His first person monologue reach such a level of scope and complexity that it's hard to follow when you don't read line by line, with a full level of concentration. But that's James Ellroy's magic right there, he makes you want to read.
From Ellroy's own admission, Bucky Bleichert is a little bit of a Mary Sue. He's a doppelganger of the writer, trying to make some meaning of surrounding ghosts. Like all Mary Sue's Bleichert is a little flat, but Ellroy's narrative mastery gives him some perspective through the boxing background and the Kay subplot. Lee Blanchard also comes a little flat as a taciturn bruiser with a dark past that moves him forward.
The cop squad is breeze of fresh air in noir fiction. Russ Millard, Harry Sears and Fritz Vogel are all complex humans that you cannot place into a "good cop, bad cop" routine. They are men that are driven by the idea that they are doing the right thing, despite all having different definitions of law and justice. Everytime they are around, pages disappear and the portrait of L.A. appear in front of my eyes.
Honorable mention to the Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, who's an efficient ghost. The characters talk to her, apologize to her when a lead is a dead end, she has a direct impact despite being dead. Not to mention Ellis Leow, but you guys already know him if you've seen L.A Confidential. That politician bastard.
The Black Dahlia occupies a strong place in James Ellroy's legacy. It's a novel tainted by the shadow of his murdered mother Geneva Hillker, whom he salutes in the afterword. It's also an overly complex story that doesn't quite lives up to the equation it created. The lead characters are a little flat and they are droning through a rich background that brings the answers on a silver platter. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good, entertaining book, but it's a novel where James Ellroy might have been a little too involved in to make it live up to its expectactions.
