Status Updates From The Black Dahlia (L.A. Quar...

This book is awesome. Bucky and Blanchard are such interesting characters, and the 1940s L.A. setting is so darkly immersive

I'm about 20% into this novel and still no Black Dahlia yet. Nope! We had to spend 13% (!!!) of this novel on the boxing match between the 2 police officers who are going to be investigating her murder. Definitely not the true crime book I thought I was going to get and more along the lines of a Raymond Chandler novel.

Good

All this gritty guy stuff - I can’t work out how Ellroy feels about it. Is he living out a fantasy of his own. Can’t feel like the sort of man he writes about as an author can he? I wonder how much of the interrogation of Red was his own insecurity? Or is he judgement-free, a presenter of the facts, for better or worse?

We are drawn into the world of the girl, Elizabeth Short. We meet the father, a small, sleazy man with short-man syndrome. Lee is unravelling. Bucky and Kay are circling. Bobby de Witt is out there. And Loew is politicising.