‚The Black Dahlia‘ and Our Responsibility to the Past

There’s an Anthony Bourdain quote I particularly love:

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.

After finishing William J. Mann’s “Black Dahlia,” an exhaustive examination of L.A.’s arguably most famous murder case, my mind riffed on that quote:

Once you’ve read about the real Elizabeth Short, you’ll never stop wanting to slap James Ellroy upside the head.

If you’re a fan of true crume, chances are good you’re familiar with the details of the Black Dahlia case: Elizabeth Short, a young wanderer who worked intermittently as a waitress (and aspired to become an actress, according to some sources) was found brutally murdered in vacant lot in Leimert Park on the morning of January 15, 1947. The case was an instant tabloid sensation, and the LAPD deployed an immense amount of resources to find the killer—only to come up with squat after years of investigation.

Within days of the murder, the tabloids crafted a portrait of Short as a sex-crazed lesbian prostitute who hung out with freaks and practically invited her own death. As Mann makes clear, though, nothing could have been further from the truth: Short barely drank, didn’t run with a particularly nasty crowd, and—as far as anyone can prove—never engaged in prostitution. She was a dreamer, and largely indistinguishable from any of the thousands of young people who flooded L.A. after the War. (The “Black Dahlia” moniker, given to her by slavering journalists in search of a buzzy nickname, has femme fatale connotations that simply don’t mesh with reality.)

Mann offers up a prime suspect for the killing that makes a lot of sense. If he’s right, Short’s biggest mistake was befriending the wrong man at the wrong moment—she didn’t provoke her fate.

Which brings me to James Ellroy’s “The Black Dahlia,” published in 1987 but still worshipped by generations of crime-fiction aficionados. It is a very good book, neurotic and dark and messy, and maybe Ellroy’s best; fans of poking at an author’s psychology may sense him using a fictionalized version of Short’s murder and the subsequent investigation to explore, subtextually, his own issues with his mother’s brutal slaying in 1958. (It’s also one of Ellroy’s easier reads, I would argue, before he surrendered completely to becoming the self-described “demon dog” of crime fiction, his prose style mutating into jazzy, dash-riddled pseudo-poetry.)

Ellroy’s version of Short lifts heavily from the tabloid simulacrum, and I didn’t think much of it either time I read the novel. Now that I’ve finished Mann’s book, however, I feel a tinge of sadness; Short didn’t deserve this sort of fictional afterlife, either.

But any number of authors would argue that “deserve” has nothing to do with it. The point of fiction is to be fearless, they might argue; to take whatever raw materials from history and mold them into some version of truth. You should have the leeway to remake real people into heroes and villains, to give them layers that didn’t exist. Within this framework, whatever Ellroy did to Short wasn’t personal—he just needed an avatar to explore the nature of evil, as well as his own dark places.

And I understand all of that, but I’m also wondering if, as writers, there’s something we owe the dead.

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Nick Kolakowski is the author of several crime novels, including “Where the Bones Lie”, “Payback is Forever”, „Maxine Unleashes Doomsday“ and „Boise Longpig Hunting Club“ as well as the Love & Bullets trilogy of novellas. His work has been nominated for the Anthony and Derringer awards, and his short story “Scorpions” appeared in The Best Mystery and Suspense 2024. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Mystery Weekly, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and more.

Just out: RIGHTEOUS TRASH, the third book in what is called the Boise Noir Trilogy. Rock and a Hard Place Press did a masterful job on the cover (as they did with the reissued editions of the first two books in the trilogy, BOISE LONGPIG HUNTING CLUB and RATTLESNAKE RODEO).

RIGHTEOUS TRASH follows Jake, an Iraq War veteran and former bounty hunter, and his gun-running sister Frankie as they try to dig themselves out of a big financial hole the only way they know how—by doing something incredibly insane and possibly deadly. »This time around, the action isn’t restricted to Idaho; there’s also a sequence set in New Orleans that’s a.) based on a real-life incident, if you can believe it, and b.) one of the funnier things I’ve written. The book’s centerpiece is also the craziest robbery I could think of—I had a lot of fun orchestrating that bit of chaos.«

His „Payback is Forever“ (Shotgun Honey 2022) is inspired clearly by the novels of Richard Stark. Our review here (in German). – See also his Hell of a Mess. A Love & Bullets Hookup.

Nick Kolakowski, geboren 1980, aufgewachsen in Washington. D.C., hat Geschichte in Chicago studiert. Er schreibt Romane, Kurzgeschichten, Lyrik und Essays, viele davon über Crime Fiction und verwandte Themen. Seine Texte erscheinen u. a. in der Washington Post, in Shotgun Honey, North American Review, The Evergreen Review, Rust & Months. Kolakowski lebt in New York City. Eine Besprechung des von Parker inspirierten „Payback is Forever“ in unseren Bloody Chops.

Bei Suhrkamp auf Deutsch: Love & Bullets.
His essays with us. 

His website nickkolakowski.com

His column „Smoking Gun“ with us: 
‘Salem’s Lot’ and the Horror of a Stephen King Adaptation
(27) „Rebel Ridge“: Calmly Burn the Whole Thing Down
‘Monsieur Spade’ and the Faustian Bargain
John Woo is Remaking ‘The Killer.’ But Why?
The Newest ‘Ripley’ Series is Stunning and Flawed
‘Sugar’: Not the Neo-Noir Revival We Need
(3) Moral Redemption in Noir: Is It Possible?
(4) What Makes Jack Reacher Tick?
(5) ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Tries to Make the Familiar into Something New
(6) Is David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ a Comedy? 
(7) Rewatching ‘Drive’: Gosling as Noir’s Apex Predator
(8) Elmore Leonard  – City Primeval
(9) Cormac McCarthy Used Crime Fiction’s Tropes to Make Masterpieces
(10) Parker: Donald Westlake’s One Amazing Trick
(11) Cosby, Winslow, Pruitt: Three Heavy-Hitting Thillers for Summer
(12) Weed-Based Crime Thrillers are Going Up in Smoke
(13) ‘The Last of Us’: Crime in the Post-Apocalypse 
(14) What Made “Glass Onion” and “Knives Out” So Popular?
(15) Jordan Harper’s One-Two Punch of Crime Fiction Deserves a Wide Audience
(16) ‘True Detective’ Season 2: Was It Better Than We All Thought?
(17) From ‘Touch of Evil’ to ‘True Detective,’ Long Shots are Crime Films’ Secret Weapon
(18) Michael Mann, again: What Michael Mann Teaches Us About Enduring Crime Fiction
(19) „Heat 2“ – How Do You Craft a Sequel to a Masterpiece?
(20) 4 Ways Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Novel Stands Out From the Film.
(21) On „Heat“: Manhunter Takes Down Thief: How Michael Mann’s Early Career Led to ‘Heat’
(22) The Most Honest Nihilism – on „The Way of the Gun“
(23) No, Time to Die – The latest James Bond movie digs into the fatalism at the iconic spy’s core.
(24) Cormac McCarthy’s Overlooked Masterpiece? – „The Councelor“
(25) „Nightmare Alley“ – How Guillermo del Toro’s Film Alters a Masterpiece Noir Novel
(26) David Cronenberg – The Carnal Crime of “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises”
(27) With Parker, Donald E. Westlake Pulled Off Crime Fiction’s Most Spectacular Magic Trick
(28) Guy Ritchie’s Return to Crime Films is Worth Watching
(29) Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’: Hint of Things to Come?
(30) David Lynch and the Beautiful Weirdness
(31) ‘Where the Bones Lie’ and the Engine of California Noir
(32) “Den of Thieves 2”: Stealing from the Best
(33) White Lotus and the Gentle Art of Hating Your Protagonists
(34) Neal Stephenson
(35) Where is Storytelling Going?
(36) ‚She Rides Shotgun‘ and the Making of Legends
(37) Jack Bauer, ‘24’ and the Great Memory-Hole
(38) How “Play Dirty” Did Richard Stark’s Parker Dirty
(39) ‘The Lowdown,’ Jim Thompson and the Ghosts of Noir
(40) “The Rip”: An Atypical Director Delivers a Typical Crime Thriller
(41) ‚Cape Fear‘ and Pop Cultural Eternal Return
(42) 3 x »Man on Fire«