This month we have a very exciting opportunity to interview James Ellroy about his 1987 novel The Black Dahlia. The book has been adapted to the big screen and is set for release September 15th with a star-studded cast including Scarlett Johansson, Josh Hartnet, and Hilary Swank. Due to James Ellroy's promotion schedule for the film,
we will not be able to host a live chat with him on Gather, and instead will be posting the interview for all of you to enjoy on Thursday, September 14th from 1-3pm ET.
If you have any questions for James Ellroy that you would like us to cover in the interview, please comment on this article with your inquiry.
About "The Black Dahlia"
Summary:
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.
Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly
Based on a notorious, unsolved Los Angeles murder case, the central drama of this hard-boiled mystery--set in the late 1940s--begins when the body of Elizabeth Short, an engagingly beautiful and promiscuous woman in her 20s, is discovered in a vacant lot, cut in half, disemboweled and bearing evidence that she had been tortured for several days before dying. Dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press, the victim becomes an obsession for two L.A.P.D. cops, narrator Bucky Bleichert and his partner, Lee Blanchard, both ex-boxers who also are best friends and in love with the same woman. Despite a huge effort by the department, leads seem to go nowhere, and Bucky is mortified when he inadvertently helps to suppress evidence--the apparently innocuous fact that a woman he spends many nights with, casually bisexual Madeleine Sprague, daughter of a crooked real-estate tycoon, knew "the Dahlia" and slept with her once. Bucky begins to fear for his future, but slowly and dangerously, he learns that his is one of the tamest crimes of corruption committed by the many people he knows. Building like a symphony, this is a wonderful, complicated but accessible tale of ambition, insanity, passion and deceit, with the perfect setting of booming, postwar Los Angeles.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Buy The Black Dahlia:
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Book Sense
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Visit theblackdahlia.gather.com to read more about the book and movie
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Comments: 7
I read recently that he agrees with Steve Hodel's theory that his father, George, was Dahila's murder. I subscribe to the Harnisch theory of Dr. Bayley but I think Dahlia who was missing for awhile was done in by Bayley AND his mistress.