Pulp Fiction

Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

It was the Greeks who first associated the word genre with literature and the arts. Genres have traditionally been created by conventions, which tend to change over time while new ones are created. It is not uncommon for works to fit into more than one genre if they follow said genre's conventions.

The American book The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy is often categorized into the Neo-noir Crime Fiction genre. I've never really taken the time to read a crime novel before, which was surprising when I realized that because I love movies and television series that delve into criminal investigations.

Neo-noir is French for "black film." The typical time period of this genre takes place between the 1940s and up to the early 1960s. In this case the novel begins in 1943 and continues through 1949 with the Black Dahlia being found in 1947.

One of the male leads, which is a characteristic of neo-noir, is Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert: LAPD and former boxer, who ends up saving the life of the other male lead Officer Lee Blanchard. There is a small amount of romance in the book between Bucky and Lee's roommate Kay Lake, who end up married towards the end of the book. Bucky and Lee end up partners, and later discover the body of Elizabeth Short while on a stakeout.

Another characteristic seems to be this sense of identity crisis where the characters tend to be trapped in difficult situations where they become desperate and conflicted. Bucky in particular fits this because he is dragged onto the case against his will, but soon goes down this dark downward spiral. Solving this murder, and then when Lee goes missing, the two mysteries become his obsession that cause him to further and further self-destruct. Lee himself is instantly obsessed with the case from the beginning who becomes more emotionally detached until his disappearance.

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Crime fiction is a genre that fictionalizes crimes, investigations, criminals, and their motives. Crime fiction is a pretty big genre in itself, and has been sub categorized. Out of all of the sub genres, I would have to say that Black Dahlia fits the best into would probably be Detective fiction. It is also sort of a historical whodunnit sub genre since the book revolved around a historical murder case.

The book is based on one of Hollywood's most notorious murder cases; Elizabeth Short. I did some digging into the history of Elizabeth Short, who was murdered in January 1947. It was during this time that the newspapers tended to nickname crimes that were particularly... colorful. Elizabeth Short became known as "The Black Dahlia." She was found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California with her body cut in half at the waist, completely nude and drained of all blood. Her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth towards the ears, in Glasgow smile fashion, much like the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

The murder is still unsolved to this day. The killer actually even rang up the newspaper and sent items to the station. Because the case was so famous there have been over fifty instances of people calling in to confess that they were the killer, especially whenever the case surfaces again with a novel or movie release. Many people blame the reporters of the time for trampling evidence at the scene and not passing information to police for the still unsolved crime.

I found that the book seems to also have some horror fiction elements. Crime and horror often go hand-in-hand with one another but there is a distinction between the two. Both seem to delve into human depravity, but while crime generally approaches it more matter-of-fact with violence, horror wants to overwhelm you with imagery. The intent is different. If the novel tends to be more concerned with the procedural aspects of hunting down criminals then the horror aspect of the genre is usually dropped.

I got to page 258, right after Bucky and Kay's wedding, I wasn't sure what the rest of the book was going to be about since I was pretty satisfied with it ending there. The rest of the book actually brings the crime to a false ending since the actual murder was never solved; it's sort of a double ending. I wonder if Ellroy chose to do that because The Black Dahlia is the first in the series, or because he wanted to follow some sort of convention. One thought I had was maybe that last section of the book wasn't reality but rather Bucky's fantasy. He has been so obsessed throughout the novel in solving this murder, that because he couldn't solve it in his real life, he chose to write a narrative relating to his life to compensate for the unsolved murder.

One of the things I liked most about the novel is Ellroy's writing because you can just tell that he writes for himself, not the reader. Part of this may stem from the fact that Ellroy's own mother's murder is unsolved, and that The Black Dahlia can be seen as Ellroy's own wish-fulfillment to find his mother's killer.