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The Black Dahlia

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a 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. 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.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Former dick Bucky Bleichert tells how he solved the title murder case, and why the solution of the crime was kept secret though it cost him his badge, girl, and best friend. While the Marlowe-esque Bucky is fictional, his account agrees with the known facts of this real 1947 torture-killing of an L.A. party girl. Corruption and depravity are dressed in gaudy dialogue and period grit. This edition includes a concluding essay drawing parallels between the Dahlia case and Ellroy's personal and life-changing encounter with murder. All this is served up by Stephen Hoye, who convincingly plays the detective with a world-weariness that fails to blunt his capacity for lust, shock, and revulsion. He modulates his pace shrewdly for suspense and drama, and manages to make the neo-noir clichés seem fresh and genuine. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 2, 2006
      Narrator Hoye firmly nails young world-weary cop Bucky Bleichert in this audio version of Ellroy's 1987 crime novel. The flawed boxer-turned-lawman becomes obsessed with L.A.'s notorious unsolved 1947 torture-murder case, as well as the secret life of his missing partner, Lee Blanchard. Hoye proves a fine match for Ellroy's hardboiled prose, shuttling easily between hard and soft tones, crystallizing Bleichert's mix of cynicism, confusion, hurt and rage. Set in booming postwar Los Angeles, this tale of ambition, deceit and obsession builds to symphonic proportions. Throughout, Hoye skillfully modulates his narration to distinctly render each character—corrupt cops, city officials, pimps, GIs, Mexican bar owners, prostitutes, society matrons and even the sound of a bullet piercing canvas. Hoye especially shines during heated police interrogations, able to shift his voice on a dime. The audio includes a new afterword from Ellroy, which might have delivered more punch had Ellroy read it himself. But in terms of this gritty, sprawling novel, Hoye was unquestionably the right man for the job. Simultaneous release with the Mysterious Press paperback movie tie-in (Reviews, Sept. 4, 1987).

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 1, 1987
      Based on a notorious, unsolved Los Angeles murder case, the central drama of this hard-boiled mysteryset in the late 1940sbegins 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 evidencethe 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 settingof booming, postwar Los Angeles.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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