Essay on The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy is published for informational purposes only. The free papers are not written by our writers, they are contributed by users, so we are not responsible for the content of this free sample paper. If you want to buy a quality Essay on Essay on The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy at affordable prices please use our essay writing services offered by EssayEmpire.

A figure who could have easily lurched from the pages of one of his own crime novels, James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles to parents on the fringes of show business who divorced when he was eight. When he was ten, Ellroy's mother was strangled and her body dumped in an ivy patch by a killer who was never found. Already a keen fan of crime magazines and books, on his eleventh birthday, Ellroy read about LA's most notorious unsolved murder: the 1947 Black Dahlia killing, in which Elizabeth Short was tortured and killed, her naked body hacked in two. According to his memoir, My Dark Places, Ellroy 'read the Dahlia story a hundred times'. A photo of Short revealed a pretty woman with 'hair swept up and back - like a 1940s portrait shot of my mother'. As he succinctly put it, 'It sent me way off the deep end'.

After a troubled adolescence and young adulthood, Ellroy cleaned up his act and started writing visceral and surreally violent crime novels, including a trilogy about LAPD cop Lloyd Hopkins. His seventh book, The Black Dahlia, appeared in 1987 and was a vast leap forward in every way. The first of four volumes subsequently dubbed The LA Quartet, it is an unbelievably powerful novel and one that finally pays tribute to the two women who had continued to haunt him - his mother and Elizabeth Short. Using the Dahlia case as the backdrop for a story of two LA cops, Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, who become friends and partners, Ellroy meticulously constructs an epic and hugely ambitious portrayal of police corruption, a twisted love triangle and myriad layers of deceit, duplicity and desire, all set in a brilliantly depicted LA: a city seething with fear, paranoia and all manner of tawdry passions.

Free essays are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can order a term paper, research paper or custom TOPIC at our site which offers professional essay writing services. Get your high quality custom paper at relatively cheap prices. EssayEmpire is the best solution for those who seek help in essay writing related to TOPIC and other relevant topics.