One of the most famous unsolved murders in the US – The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy brings to mind the 1940’s/50s film noir feeling.  James Ellroys fictional account of what could have happened to the want – to – be starlette Elizabeth Short feels seedy as we explore the underbelly of the City of Angels in the late 1940’s.

For author bio James Ellroy click HERE  Oddly enough, James Ellroy’s own mother was brutally raped and murdered with her oppressor never found.  This horrific event most definitely affected a young James Ellroy.  He is also author of the award winning LA Confidential.

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.

We all agreed the language and seediness of the book was a bit much – but that’s the era and feel of the day in LA it seems.   An update has been given from a man who lived in LA at the time he was a child.  His father was Dr. Steve Hodel.  George Hodel his son found disturbing items in his fathers estate.   He believes his father may have murdered Elizabeth Short.

Thanks to Scarlette for hosting! We always love nesting at your home and to have Tika the most lovely of Great Danes join us !