Two lessons to draw from this book: slut shaming leads to stalled murder cases and men should not be allowed to run things. Ever. Because they will end up having sex with suspects, suppress evidence, and discriminate against lesbians and promiscuity until they can't solve a case due to all the blind spots they've drawn.

Ultimately, I left this book feeling kind of icky. The Black Dahlia case is a real case, the girl is a real girl. But yet she will be remembered more as the fantasy version that Ellroy creates here (and also in the movie based on this book). And the fantasy version is portrayed as a promiscuous ne'er-do-well, routinely called slut, "lez", and whore by those who are trying to solve her case. Not to mention the insanely gory details that Ellroy feels necessary to share. I can abide by a good detective story, but I couldn't help feel that this was exploitative and cruel to the girl's family.

Increasing the ick factor was the raging, toxic masculinity of the 1940s on display here despite the book being written in the 70s. I'm all about putting a bygone time on parade to learn how far we have come and why going backwards would be so harmful. But this book's use of "homo," the n-word, slut, "lez", and just really terrible sexual attitudes were gratuitous and over-the-top.

If you get a later version that includes the afterword, you find out that the author truly does share some of these attitudes. Ellroy shares that his mother was murdered at age 40 after leading a promiscuous lifestyle that he clearly begrudges her despite having "incestuous feelings" about her. He confesses to channeling his feelings into the real-life Black Dahlia case that he then turned into this book. So nothing in the book was about satirizing the 1940s. Instead it was about working out a complicated mother-son relationship. And he used a real case and a real human being to do that. Hence, you leave feeling icky.