The Black Dahlia murder hit post-War Los Angeles like a bombshell and this impenetrable mystery was the haunting crown jewel of LAPD's unsolved murders. Even before her savage death, beautiful 22-year old Elizabeth Short, an aspiring starlet and nightclub habitu,, was known as the Black Dahlia. Since her horrible demise, she has become a magnetic icon in American pop culture, a mythical symbol of noir Hollywood. In this new, expanded edition, John Gilmore plumbs to the dark core of this terrifying story that he argues can never be truly solved and delivers to us the real Elizabeth Short, the girl who became the enigmatic Black Dahlia. He ushers the reader into her world and her life in intimate, searing, explosive, first-hand revelations.

The most satisfying and disturbing conclusion to the Black Dahlia case. After reading Severed, I feel like I truly know Elizabeth Short and her killer. -- David Lynch

The most uncanny evocation of LA during and after the war... His portrait of Elizabeth Short as a strange, unknowable somnambulist sleepwalking through that unique junction of time and space is permanently haunting. -- Gary Indiana