THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy 3.7 of 10 stars ⭐ Time to read: 6min Full of dead ends & unlikable characters
THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy 
3.7 of 10 stars ⭐ Time to read: 6min
Full of dead ends & unlikable characters…
BASIC PLOT:
Bucky Bleichert, an ex-boxer, turned cop, is at a crossroads in his life. He doesn't have much ambition, and is just floating through his police career, much like he did during his time in the boxing ring. He's a born screw up, who let's his emotions, and his temper control his life.
Bucky just floats along, always taking the path of least resistance, never planning, or even trying to find a way towards advancement. He is a bit enamored of Lee Blanchard, another cop, who's also an ex-boxer. But unlike Bucky, Lee has worked for what he has, or as Bucky puts it, "he (Lee) worked to assure his own future, while I skated uncertainly toward mine." Lee predicts they will become partners, and they do, but mostly due to Lee's behind the scenes manuevering, not anything Bucky does, or doesn't do.
The Police department stages a boxing match between Bucky and Lee, as a publicity stunt, to drum up support for a bond proposal on the 1947 ballot. If it passes, police wages will be raised across the board, and Bucky will become Lee's partner in warrants, a desired appointment. Bucky loses, barely, but he goes the distance, and the bond measure passes, so Bucky gets his partnership.
All is fine for awhile, and Bucky becomes part of Lee's strange little family. Lee lives with Katherine Lake, Kay for short, an ex gangster's dame, who Lee rescued when he put Bobby De Witt, her exploiter, away for robbery. They aren't married, and Kay discretely tells Bucky they don't sleep together either. It's against departmental regulations for Lee to cohabitate with a woman who's not his wife, but Lee has enough juice with the right people, so his indiscretion is overlooked. Lee has given Kay the best of everything, including an education. They seem content, but not necessarily happy, and Bucky slowly falls in love with Kay. He doesn't sleep with her either though, not wanting to hurt Lee, so the status quo goes on, until the Black Dahlia is killed.
A woman is found in a vacant lot, mutilated, cut in half, and tortured to death. It affects Lee badly. His little sister was murdered, and these types of cases, mess with his head. It doesn't help matters that Bobby De Witt is scheduled to get out of prison soon, or that Lee is taking lots of speed. He becomes obsessed with the Dahlia case, even stealing copies of police files he's not supposed to have, and renting a cheap hotel room, as his Dahlia base of operations. Kay and Bucky can see Lee is losing it, and both try to reel him in, to no avail. He eventually cracks at an important meeting, with the mayor present, and then disappears. Kay seems nonplussed, but Bucky is distressed. He's only on the Dahlia case because Lee maneuvered both of them into it.
Bucky tries to get back to his job at warrants, but with Lee's departure, it's not so easy. He has enemies, like a cop named Johnny Vogel, who was destined for Bucky's job at warrants, before the big fight took it away from him. There's also Fritz Vogel, Johnny's father, a rogue detective, who's machinations are not to be trusted.
Without Lee, and left to his own devices, Bucky is back to his old ways of not making the best decisions for himself. He finds out the Dahlia might have had ties to the lesbian underworld, when he uncovers information about a rich woman named Madeline Sprague. She tells Bucky she'll sleep with him, if he keeps her name off of his police reports, and out of the papers. Like the idiot he is, he agrees, and their sordid affair begins.
Will Madeline lead Bucky to the Dahlia's killer, or down a path of his own destruction?
WHAT WORKS:
*VERY WELL WRITTEN As always, Ellroy pulls in the reader with his engaging prose. His characters (for the most part) are believable, and lifelike. The devil is in the details, and his stories are alive with the sounds and smells of 1947 Los Angeles.
WHAT DOESN'T WORK:
*THE BEGINNING IS A MESS! The dead ends begin with Bucky's father. It seems like he may be a main character, due to the time Ellroy spends with his backstory, and his relationship with Bucky. But he isn't, and all that time is wasted, and not entertaining to begin with. He's a colorful character, there could have been funny stories about his antics, but instead, he's made into a raging racist, who the reader doesn't care about. It's a missed opportunity, one of many. The fight also goes on w-a-a-a-y too long. It was so drawn out, I started skimming, and that's never a promising beginning.
*KAY SHOULD BE INTERESTING, but she's not. She never comes to life, and she's not likable either. I could never form a picture of her in my head (the way I did with Madeline), even though she was well described. Having a blank face, instead of a well drawn character in your reader's mind, is a fail. Why do Bucky or Lee find her desirable? She seems worn out, with a distaste for men. Her aversion is believable after what she's been through with the rougher sex, but then why do these two want her? Even if Lee has a savior complex, it doesn't seem genuine that he would avoid sleeping with her. If Lee has a sexual dysfunction, it's never really explained. For that matter, for most of the book, Bucky is pretty asexual too, which is an odd choice, given that these are young men. Why does Bucky want Kay at all? In noir there should be passion, and there isn't any. At least with Madeline, there's lust, but with Kay, there's nothing. You never understand why Kay and Bucky are together, much less why their relationship deteriorates. Nothing makes sense, and again, another missed opportunity.
*LEE IS TOO FLAWED AND BUCKY IS TOO BLIND Lee is a flawed individual, but doesn't seem to care about Bucky or Kay at all. After all, he deserts them both, without a word. Why doesn't Bucky see through Lee? I know we sometimes see what we want to see in people, but it doesn't make sense Bucky wouldn't pick up on Lee's hidden life. There's never an explanation as to why Kay suddenly stops caring about Bucky, or why Lee's motivations go beyond flawed, into deplorable. Neither of them care what their behavior will do to Bucky, and we don't care when they disappear, and we should.
*IT FEELS LIKE THERE'S NO OUTLINE To this reader, it felt like Ellroy had no real outline, and just meandered his was around the actual case. Because the Dahlia case was real, there are certain things you can't change. It would have been better if he had created his own case, a Dahlia copycat, where he had control over the details. Without that control, and without a plan, it feels he has no direction. This leads to unappealing characters, too many reversals, and not enough likable individuals for Bucky to interact with. Bucky also has no touchstones (something his father could have been), and so we, the readers, don't have them either. This makes Bucky a kite in the wind, blowing into trouble at every turn, with no one to reel him in. Bucky's motivations often don't make sense; why does he do these things? Self destruction is not an explanation, and again we are left with questions, when we should have answers.
TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION:
*I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK, and it's too bad, because Ellroy's descriptive prose is on point. But it's not enough to carry it, and I found myself dreading having to finish it. Bucky is not a character you root for, he's often exasperating, and the other main characters are worse. The overall story is a melange of confusing motivations, mixed with unbelievable plotlines, leading to a disastrous ending. It's like you're in the car with a drunk hill racer, careening around the twists and turns of Mulholland. You know the wreck is coming, you want to bail out, but you're not sure when to jump, so you can still see the crash.
This is in direct opposition to Ellroy's book, Brown's Requiem. I found myself not wanting that book to end, and being angry when I found out it wasn't part of a series (as it was obviously tailor made for it). In the end, this is just well written tripe, full of dead ends, missed opportunities and let downs.
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