Past 50 Books but Whatever
I should really count them up for the record.
I've had James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia on my shelf for awhile so it became my carrying around book during the holiday shopping season. But if you haven't read it, go away because I imagine I will get spoilerish"
I really liked the narrative of the pre-murder events. Setting up the partnership of the main character and his best friend. In fact, I would say that Ellroy might not have gone quite far enough in establishing why Bucky is so attached to Blanchard. But I'm over that.
I thought when it got to the boxing match, I would be skipping pages to get it over with. Who wants to read that? But there was enough drama that I stuck with it, and was glad that I did.
So we get to the actual Black Dahlia case. Ew. But I found the dynamics of coordinating a city-wide investigation really interesting. Who is in charge and who gets pulled in and how do you keep it all organized when 100 people are out doing their thing? And how do the investigating officers work with the D.A.?
Sidenote: Is the D.A. always a pill in cop books? I guess it depends on who is telling the story.
So the case unfolds and dead ends. Blanchard goes off the deep end and disappears, and Bucky marries the girl. Fast forward to Bucky's career and marriage unravelling and a renewed obsession with solving the Black Dahlia case. Here's where it gets both interesting and annoying:
Bucky is established as a good, if new, investigator. But his attitude in his personal life is, "I know you have secrets and I don't care". So he gets burned. I am not caring all that much about his wife's history, until it links back up with the Dahlia case and that was pretty nicely done. But it was so messy when the solve finally came together that I kind of didn't care who did it. They were all assholes.
The cheater fact that didn't help was that by the time Bucky knows who did it, there were too many pages left. Either he was wrong, or this was going to get really boring really fast.
This happened to be a movie tie-in copy. Ellroy wrote an afterword on how his mother's murder in 1958 tied him to this case. Apparently the marketing of the novel upon its original publication trumpeted the emotional connection, and here he wanted to put it all in perspective 20 years later. So whatever my nitpicky issues...how it all must have been jumbled together in his brain and come out developed into a story like this is pretty genius, in my opinion.
I've had James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia on my shelf for awhile so it became my carrying around book during the holiday shopping season. But if you haven't read it, go away because I imagine I will get spoilerish"
I really liked the narrative of the pre-murder events. Setting up the partnership of the main character and his best friend. In fact, I would say that Ellroy might not have gone quite far enough in establishing why Bucky is so attached to Blanchard. But I'm over that.
I thought when it got to the boxing match, I would be skipping pages to get it over with. Who wants to read that? But there was enough drama that I stuck with it, and was glad that I did.
So we get to the actual Black Dahlia case. Ew. But I found the dynamics of coordinating a city-wide investigation really interesting. Who is in charge and who gets pulled in and how do you keep it all organized when 100 people are out doing their thing? And how do the investigating officers work with the D.A.?
Sidenote: Is the D.A. always a pill in cop books? I guess it depends on who is telling the story.
So the case unfolds and dead ends. Blanchard goes off the deep end and disappears, and Bucky marries the girl. Fast forward to Bucky's career and marriage unravelling and a renewed obsession with solving the Black Dahlia case. Here's where it gets both interesting and annoying:
Bucky is established as a good, if new, investigator. But his attitude in his personal life is, "I know you have secrets and I don't care". So he gets burned. I am not caring all that much about his wife's history, until it links back up with the Dahlia case and that was pretty nicely done. But it was so messy when the solve finally came together that I kind of didn't care who did it. They were all assholes.
The cheater fact that didn't help was that by the time Bucky knows who did it, there were too many pages left. Either he was wrong, or this was going to get really boring really fast.
This happened to be a movie tie-in copy. Ellroy wrote an afterword on how his mother's murder in 1958 tied him to this case. Apparently the marketing of the novel upon its original publication trumpeted the emotional connection, and here he wanted to put it all in perspective 20 years later. So whatever my nitpicky issues...how it all must have been jumbled together in his brain and come out developed into a story like this is pretty genius, in my opinion.