James Ellroy & The Black Dahlia

James Ellroy recently wrote a piece for The Guardian in which he talks about writing The Black Dahlia. The article is in their “How I Wrote” column. It’s hard to become more involved in a case than Ellroy was. The introduction to the article says, “The death of wannabe starlet Elizabeth Short became entwined in Ellroy’s mind with the murder of his mother ““ and inspired his bestselling novel.” You can read Ellroy’s piece here. https://bit.ly/2TDlyoa

You can find Ellroy’s book about the unsolved murder in the Web Store, along with his other books. https://bit.ly/2KUNy3y

Here’s the summary of The Black Dahlia.

The highly acclaimed novel based on America’s most infamous unsolved murder case. Dive into 1940s Los Angeles as two cops spiral out of control in their hunt for The Black Dahlia’s killer in this powerful thriller that is “brutal and at the same time believable” (New York Times).


On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a Los Angeles 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: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But 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.

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If you tend to get caught up in research and history as I do, you can also read about The Black Dahlia case on the FBI’s site. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/the-black-dahlia