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Loading... The Black Dahlia (1987)by James Ellroy
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A rare 5 star review for a detective story. The book read like Raymond Chandler on steroids. Hard boiled 1940's dialogue with the sex and violence that RC inferred. More dense and less dependence on sense of place though the seedier parts of LA and Tijuana brought you in, front and center. Threads and layers were many and well meshed with an ending that kept twisting. Rarely did I stop and think of "who was that" or miss a storyline. Bucky and Lee and Kay and the rest were almost outrageous but I bought into their desperation. JE wrote it well with dialogue and references set it in post war America that would be scowled at in these more "sensitive" times. JE really seemed to feel the heartbeat of that time and place. ( ) This one has definitely broadened my sense of what hard-boiled fiction can do. Unlike Chandler and Hammett, Ellroy gets the reader neck-deep in the moral turpitude of 1940s LA. The sordid details can distract from the plot at times, but I did end up deeply invested in the monster behind Short's murder. Bucky's tone is severe, his accounts graphic, and for this reason I missed the humour of voices such as, for instance, Philip Marlowe. I finished this in a few sittings, feverishly reading it not out of a sense of suspense, but out of a morbid desire for closure; an antidote for all the sickness. The plot revolves around a murder mystery set in Los Angeles in the 1940s. They found an unidentified young woman disemboweled and mutilated in a vacant lot. The two detectives, both ex-boxers, become obsessed with the case to where they literally destroy their own lives to solve the case. As much as I wanted to enjoy The Black Dahlia, I found it to be a dull novel trying to be a stylistic breakthrough in crime fiction writing. Is it possible to write a crime fiction novel with no suspense at all? Active 2: The novel portrays the worst aspects of human nature and the dark side of LA in the 40s, with gross ambiance. The writing style was praised for its fast pace, but it's overrated with too much slang and testosterone-filled dialogue, lacking suspense and story building. That’s not my cup of tea. I prefer quality writing, even if it’s not “innovative”. Is contained inContainsHas the adaptationAwardsNotable Lists
On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia-and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard. Both are obsessed with the Dahlia-driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches-into a region of total madness. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Hachette Book Group5 editions of this book were published by Hachette Book Group. Editions: 0446698873, 0446674362, 0445405252, 0446618128, 0892962062 |