ry well in this novel, though much of what he writes about the people involved is speculative.
The filter for the story is the narrator, Bucky Bleichert, one of the two detectives assigned to investigate this murder. The other is his partner, Lee Blanchard, and the two of them constitute the central characters who delve into the story of Elizabeth Short. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way it turns a horrible crime into only one more statistic in a city that Bucky finds is even more corrupt than he thought it was. He himself discovers a connection to the Black Dahlia through a woman he has had an affair with, and his obsession with the investigation becomes enmeshed in a much larger sense of the life of the city and of life in general. Bleichert also becomes involved in a related murder investigation and is himself finally removed from the force because of his conduct on the case
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