Search - Black Dahlia

This is a gritty story about a real world event in LA after WWII. The action is fast with the detectives investigating this gruesome murder behaving badly at times and with "stiff upper lip" at other times. Afterall, dealing with the types of individuals involved in the criminal underworld can not leave one unscarred. The author, James Ellroy, is the real deal. He himself has a checkered past and tragedy enough for any person. His mom was murdered when he was a youngster. And they never caught that murderer either (no one was arrested in this Black Dahlia case). The language is hot and the images are brutal, but this is the real world of police investigations.

Excellent detective novel based on the famous case. Pretty much the last word in Black Dahlia books, this is a fictional investigative account of the famous unsolved case which continues to baffle detectives all these years hence. Very gritty, very real. You'll forget it's a fictionalized account.

A slow start but picks up-an okay read.

Written like a true story (which it is supposedly based on), people say it is "noir" but I didn't find it all that dark- much less "black" (yes I know what film noir is... this isn't it). This is a detective/murder mystery. Overall, an ok fast read, written in 1940's vernacular- makes you want to know how much of it is true