The Black Dahlia

⚖The case for it

The pull here is the descent. Two LA cops let an unsolved killing eat their lives until neither can tell duty from hunger, and that slow rot works its way under my skin. Ellroy's sentences do the labor, clipped and cruel, a voice he is still sharpening here before he masters it across the novels ahead. He can go too hard at his victim's body, lingering where he might have looked away. What keeps me reading is the refusal to settle whether the fixation mourns her or feeds on her.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Ellroy solves a real unsolved murder with an invented culprit, and the final hundred pages pile reveal on reveal until the Gothic mansion finale plays like a different, pulpier book. Along the way, Elizabeth Short's mutilated body is described with a relish that the obsession plot only partly excuses.

— the honest librarian