The Black Dahlia is the first part of James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartett, a cycle of novels set in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles. This neo-noir crime novel is based on the true story of the murder of Elizabeth Short who was found mutilated, her body sliced in half at the waist, on January 15, 1947, in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Ellroy tells the story of two LAPD Detectives, Lee Blanchard and Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, who investigate the case. The more they advance, the deeper they got dragged into a swamp of violence, corruption, sex and politics. French comic-author Matz and director David Fincher delivered the graphic novels script based on James Ellroy’s book that was realised by American illustrator Miley Hyman.
Officer Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, a tough cop and ex-boxer, is also the narrator of the story. Living alone, he is enstranged by his old father. Caught up in the Zoot Suit Riots, Bucky meets Officer Lee Blanchard. The savvy, well connected Blanchard is sure to be promoted to Sergeant, soon. Blanchard’s ascension to a Detective bureau is threatened, however, by his cohabitation with Kay Lake, a woman to whom he is not married, in violation of police policy. Lake is the former girlfriend of a gangster whom Blanchard famously arrested.
In November 1946, Bucky and Blanchard are coerced into squaring off in the boxing ring. The match is a promotional tool to gain public approval for a bond measure that will give the police a bigger budget, and an eight percent pay raise for everyone on the force. Bucky, outweighed and outclassed, decides to throw the fight, his winnings enough to put his father in a good nursing home and get proper care for his dementia. A victory, however, would earn him a plainclothes job. During the fight he decides to try and win, but fails. However, he is able to keep his winnings honestly and gets the job in Warrants anyway, because his performance impresses District Attorney Ellis Loew. Partnered with Blanchard, the two quickly become friends. They work well together, until an arrest goes wrong and they kill four men in a gunfight. Meanwhile, Kay Lake becomes attracted to Bucky, telling him she doesn’t sleep with Lee. Bucky rebuffs her, despite a powerful attraction, because he sees Lee and Kay as a sort of surrogate family.
On January 15, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed “The Black Dahlia”, is found in an abandoned lot, horrifically mutilated and cut in two. The murder immediately becomes a sensation, horrifying the public and overwhelming the LAPD. Bucky finds himself developing a strange obsession with the Dahlia. He falls in love with her, seeing her troubled, nomadic, desperate existence similar to his own.
During the investigation, Bucky comes across Madeleine Sprague, a spoiled, wealthy and promiscuous socialite who greatly resembles Elizabeth Short. When he questions her, he finds she once had sex with Short, because Madeleine was curious what it would be like to sleep with someone who looked so much like herself. She plies Bucky with sex in exchange for keeping her name out of the papers. Bucky agrees to suppress evidence and they begin an affair, with Bucky fantasizing that Madeline is the Dahlia. He meets her twisted family — corrupt, cruel father Emmett who builds houses with shoddy, unsafe materials that have killed people in earthquakes, brutalizes his drug-and-alcohol-addicted wife Ramona, emotionally torments his daughters Maddie and Martha, and ridicules his former best friend and business partner Georgie, who now serves as the gardener.
Lee, meanwhile, runs away, seemingly to Tijuana. Bucky starts uncovering scandals and police corruption. This leads him to finally surrender to his love for Kay Lake, and he breaks things off with Madeleine. Bucky goes to Tijuana to search for Lee, and eventually discovers he was killed by a Mexican woman, confirming it when he digs up his rotting corpse. He tells Kay, and learns the truth: Lee was the mastermind behind the robbery that Kay’s gangster ex-boyfriend went to prison for. The convicted man was framed by Lee, who kept the money. Lee was being blackmailed by the only other survivor from the robbery, whom Lee disposed of in the gunfight that kicked off their Warrants careers—this makes Bucky Lee’s unknowing accomplice to murder in connection with Lee’s theft. Bucky is horrified, but forgives his late friend, and he and Kay marry.
Two years later, their marriage deteriorates and Bucky’s career is destroyed. While doing routine work on a wealthy man who has committed suicide, he begins thinking of the still unsolved Dahlia case because the suicide lives only a block from Madeleine Sprague. He ends up talking with the wealthy socialite who lives there and learns more about the eccentric Sprague family. His obsession piqued again, he follows Madeleine around at night. She, seeing him, has made herself up like the Dahlia, even acting like her, and begins picking up strange servicemen for one-night stands in seedy places. She and Bucky rekindle their affair, causing Kay to leave. The city decides to tear down the last four letters of the “Hollywoodland” sign, and as the police clear the area they find a hut with walls covered in dried blood. They call in Bucky, and he realizes that the hut, owned by Emmett Sprague, is where Georgie lived, which can only mean that Georgie killed Elizabeth Short. Fingerprinting of the hut confirms it.
Bucky goes to confront Madeleine and her father, and discovers them incestuously entwined on a bed. It turns out Madeline is Georgie’s daughter, and Emmett mutilated Georgie when he found out. Lee had also deduced who the killer was, but used the information to blackmail Emmett Sprague, which facilitated his trip to Tijuana. Bucky, knowing that turning them in will have consequences for him as well after having suppressed evidence, kills Georgie for some measure of justice. But then he realizes that Ramona Sprague was also involved in the murder, because of Short’s resemblance to Madeleine; Emmett, Madeleine, and Martha were all accomplices, as they each knew part of what had happened.
Bucky is removed from the force. The story ends with possible hope for Bucky’s future as he and Kay reconcile and move to Boston, the same city that Elizabeth Short was born in.
With a exciting story and beautiful drawings, “The Black Dahlia” paints a very atmospheric picture of a city full of corruption, sex, violence and vice. Some aspects of the complex and extensive story are beat down a bit short. So, you have to watch out pretty carefully to follow the story in all it’s details (but who said that’s bad? 😉 ). While I like the illustration’s “actual comic” style a lot, there are no really clear shades between fore- and background. Combined with a partly rather light coloration this leads to a sometimes blurring effect. I also had had some problems distinguishing especially the male characters when I read “The Black Dahlia” for the first time. In my opinion, they are drawn a bit too similar, sometimes differing just in small details. For example, Bucky and DA Ellis Loew share similar physique, faces and also have the same haircut and -color. But while the first has a (very) small strand hanging into his face, the latter wears a (very) small moustache.
But nevertheless, “The Black Dahlia – The Graphic Novel” is great fun and a tantalizing read, so enjoy it! 🙂
“The Black Dahlia”, Graphic Novel, James Ellroy, Miles Hyman, Matz, David Fincher, 168 pages, ISBN-10: 3943808866, ISBN-13: 978-3943808865