Piu Marie Eatwell

On the same subject as James Ellroy's gripping pulp novel, Black Dahlia (a fictional reworking of the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, in Los Angeles), but non-fiction. Piu Eatwell's book is a true crime account, based on unredacted FBI and police files and new interviews, but it's no less of a page-turner.

"In the following pages I tell the story of this extraordinary case. However, despite its narrative form, this is not a work of fiction. Anything written between quotation marks comes from show more a letter, memoir, or other written document. If I describe the weather on a particular day, it is because I checked the contemporary weather reports. " (from the preface)

I won't give spoilers, but Eatwell makes a very convincing case for the suspect she fancies as the killer.

It's a plot so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. But events are gone over several times, from different angles, which makes it easier to understand.

Psychopathic bellhops, dodgy nightclub owners, pornographers,cynical chain - smoking journalists, cops who run protection rackets (extorting the gangsters), girls arriving on the bus hoping to make it in the movies (Ann Toth, a friend of the victim,later had a bit part in the film Smash-Up - you can still see this today, on DVD) --they're all in this book.
There's even one suspect who was a physician,who was suspected of murdering his secretary, as well as the Black Dahlia. He ran an illegal abortion clinic, was into surrealist art, and was even suspected by the police of having Communist sympathies. (He escaped to the Philippines.)
One of the gangster suspects gets shot in the back with a twenty-five-caliber automatic pistol, by his dancer girlfriend, accusing him of being a "goddam cop lover". She wound up in a lunatic asylum.

The books a great read, and a real window on a previous era. Even the chapter titles are in an atmospheric art deco typeface.
Highly recommended! show less

Contrary to anything negative said about this book, there are NOT too many characters and it is NOT confusing in the least bit. Tho all are entitled to their opinions, some comments make me wonder about where some brain cells went! Piu Eatwell has written an intriguing, in-depth, amazingly well-researched book on a topic whose mystery continues to this day. Tho i tend to believe it's an issue that should be dead and buried, no pun intended.
At the turn of the century Anna Druce made the show more claim in court that her father-in-law was not merely a businessman.....he was in actuality the 5th Duke of Portland who played a dual role. Due to the Dukes odd habits , his tendency to be a hermit , and a similarity in looks, it seemed to be a legitimate possibility!
Let me say this.....years go by as the legal system debates over digging up a grave. And there is a conclusion of sorts, tho the reader is allowed to make up his/her own mind. What i enjoyed most was that Piu Eatwell brings in other relate-able pieces of history and intertwines them into this fascinating piece of writing. show less

This is a fascinating, meticulous and heartfelt retelling of the 70 year old (and officially unsolved) Black Dahlia murder case, packed with great detail about both the investigation and the state of Los Angeles and the USA at the time. It’s sensitively handled and packed with a rich cast of characters that the author seems to have really taken the time to get to know. The victim, Elizabeth Short, remains a cipher, but the personalities of those caught up in the aftermath of her death are show more richly and memorable described.
The author comes to her own conclusion about the perpetrator, and it was in the final few chapters where the narrative switches to her present day investigations, that the book most came alive for me.
I’ve not read much true crime, but what struck me most about this book was the emphasis on the people rather that the crime. It’s never titillating or ghoulish (as I, perhaps wrongly, imagine much true crime writing is) but rather a suitably somber analysis of a tragic and brutal death.
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The information here, including a very plausible theory of who was involved in the Dahlia killing, is very solid. But it's bogged down by messy writing. I frequently couldn't parse sentences or figure out what the writer was saying, and I am not a bad reader. If the quality of the writing had reached the level of the facts provided, this would be a classic of true crime writing. As it is, I'm sticking with 3.0 stars.