The Black Dahlia

Critical Praise

"Brutal and at the same time believable."
—New York Times

"One of the great American writers of our time."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A masterpiece."
—People

"High-intensity prose. Reading it aloud could shatter your wineglasses."
—Elmore Leonard

"An absolute masterpiece and Ellroy's finest work to date...played out against a beautifully dark, moody, '40s L.A. jazz score. The ultimate novel noir."
—Jonathan Kellerman

"If you don't read James Ellroy's THE BLACK DAHLIA, you will have only yourself to blame, my friend."
—Larry King

"A riveting 1940s noir Hollywood setting, full of period flavor and investigative detail."
—Boston Herald

"Ellroy has brilliantly poised the story between beauty and gross ugliness, honor and corruption, sense and loyalty, knowledge and ignorance. This is a big novel, ambitious in theme and content, and it's the finest of its kind that I've read in many a year."
—Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

"A major book."
—Library Journal

"Ellroy distills the introspective style, slang, and racism of the '40s roman noir...His characters, individuals all, are beautifully shaded, and he captures the mind-numbing detail of police work."
—Chicago Sun-Times

"Ellroy kept me glued to the chair...His ear for 1940s speech is flawless."
—Newsweek

"The novelistic equivalent of film noir."
—Christian Science Monitor

"Building like a symphony...a wonderful, complicated but accessible tale of ambition, insanity, passion, and deceit, with the perfect setting of booming, postwar Los Angeles."
—Publishers Weekly