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INTO THE DARK The
Black Dahlia
Sex can bring a great writer to his knees, so to speak, exposing the erotica writer's superficiality and the literature writer's squeamishness. By scribing under the label of "crime fiction," James Ellroy eludes the traps of both genres and proves his superiority to both. The Black Dahlia, reissued by Warner Books this spring, is a fictionalized account of the real-life murder of would-be actress Elizabeth Ann Short, whose bisected body was found in a vacant Los Angeles lot in 1947. Ellroy's novel uses the investigation of this murder to expose the corruption and naked ambition of the starlet, of those who search for her killer, and of the sensationalist press that christens her "Black Dahlia" after her dark hair and wardrobe. Officer Dwight Bleichert loses his best friend, career and credibility while trying to solve the case; Dahlia becomes his patron saint of sin, offering salvation only if he can find her murderer. Ellroy knows whereof he writes. His most recent work, an autobiography entitled My Dark Places, reopens the investigation into the murder of his own mother, who was killed when Ellroy was 10. As with the Dahlia case, no one was ever convicted. The Black Dahlia dives headfirst into the darker reaches of the psyche--a Hitchcockian place at the junction of sex and death. It is in this nebulous world that we find Bleichert, alone and obsessed, free-falling into his unconscious, with only a failed starlet to navigate by. --Valarie Smith
originally published August 26, 1998 |
