Thank goodness, a day off

I finished Black Dahlia (review below) and The Fourth Trimester, so I'm up to 58 books for the year. I may listen to another disc's worth of Endangered Species for my bedtime story, but we'll see how I feel 'round midnight, and after I've written the review for Fourth Trimester

Black Dahlia, James Ellroy:

I'm not sure how I feel about my chosen reading sequence. I was originally going to read my non-fiction titles on Elizabeth Short, but when I came across the Book-to-Movie Challenge, I decided to bump this one up the pile. Besides, I felt like I'd kept it on my shelf long enough; I really need to get more of my BookCrossing trades moving on.

Anyway, I have no idea how much of this book is based on the facts of the case, and I'm not certain that it matters. As a stand-alone murder mystery, the plot works just fine; twists galore and loose ends wrapped up nicely. I will say that I thought that the first 60 or so pages, while well-written, didn't seem relevant to the story. This was frustrating while I was slogging through Ellroy's character development, but now that I've finished, I can see that he needed that space to also set up a few important plot points.

Ellroy's novel read with a very Spillane-like cadence, but the fast-paced plot served to make this distraction fade away. His character were well-drawn, and easy enough to track [I personally have a problem doing this--an effect of MommyBrain, I'm certain].