Severed By John Gilmore

I found this book fascinating because it is about a murder that I had heard plenty about. The Black Dahlia murder has always intrigued me because it is unsolved. John Gilmore(pictured below) has written plenty of non-fiction books and true crime books and I have to say that before I read this book, I hadn't heard of him at all. He has researched the murder thorougly and it shows in the book.

The Black Dahlia was a young woman called Elizabeth Short(pictured) who was an aspiring actress in Hollywood in the 1940's. She was a very pretty girl and she had plenty of male admirers. She was from Massachusetts and she had always wanted to be a star. She came to Hollywood to be discovered, but unfortunately, she was murdered before her dreams could come true. Her body was cut in half and she was left on display,naked in a vacant lot. A woman happened to see her and she reported it to the police. There were some horrific injuries to the body and she was mutilated by the killer. The hunt for the killer began, but the police found that every lead they had was useless and that their list of suspects grew, but they either had alibis or they were ruled out by a lie detector test. The trail grew colder and the mystery grew . She had been missing for a week before her murder. Who was she with? Where were her clothes? Why had the killer cut her in half? There were more questions than answers. Gilmore has a suspect who he is certain committed the murder and another murder which was similar to the Black Dahlia's. But, unfortunately, there was little evidence and when the suspect was going to be arrested in the 1980's, but he died before they could get some answers. Other writers have their own suspects in mind for the killing, so who knows? I think that this book was well-written and it really kept me interested. I couldn't put it down and I was impressed by the amount of information that the author had on Elizabeth Short.It is a true tale of broken dreams and horror which you never think could happen in those days. Maybe some of his theories were not 100 percent accurate, but it is a very interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes true crime novels.