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A Bright And Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, And L.A.'s Scandalous Coming Of Age (2009)

by Richard Rayner(Favorite Author)

3.62 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0385509707 (ISBN13: 9780385509701)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Doubleday

review 1: There's something simply delicious about reading nonfiction books like this. They're the intellectual equivalent of Dove Bars: one part nonfiction--so feel like you're actually learning something--and one part narrative--so you actually enjoy reading it. Anyway, like another recent LA history book (John Buntin's "L.A. Noir"), this book spells out the real historical basis for Raymond Chandler's fictionalized version of Los Angeles. It turns out that the real L.A. was just as corrupt as Chicago--if not moreso. Rayner's narrative device for recounting the 20s and 30s history of this corruption is to trace the overlapping careers of two employees of the D.A.'s office: an investigator and a public prosecutor. Along the way, we get detailed accounts of many of the big even... morets of the day: the 1928 St. Francis dam catastrophe (fictionalized in "Chinatown") and the 1929 Doheny murders at the Greystone Mansion (quasi-fictionalized in "There Will Be Blood"). Wisely, Rayner only starts to compare Chandler's fictional L.A. with the real L.A. at the end of the book, after he's thoroughly immersed us in the atmosphere of 20s and 30s L.A.
review 2: This is a story that cannot be made up, although it sure sounds like it. Los Angeles in the 1920's was coming of age. The coming of age meant murder, corruption, movie stars, and politics that mirrored the cities of Chicago and New York.The story is told through the lives of two individualists who started on the right side of the law and only one remained there.Dave Clark and Leslie White both worked to the City of Los Angeles. Clark was a prosecutor and White was a crime scene investigator.Oil became the source for unbelievable wealth for men like Charlie Crawford and Ned Doheny. The wealth though provided little comfort for them when their lives started to fall apart and brought tremendous grief for their families.Oil promoter, C.C. Julian, who scammed his way to a fortune, would die a pauper.The book gives a brief account of the incredible life styles of those in the movie industry and how they were literally untouchable. Fast cars, booze, drugs, and sex were everyday occurrences.The reader is given an account of Fatty Arbuckle and how his career was destroyed by a murder, in which he was found to be innocent. Clara VBow, the hottest star of the time, finds he life in shambles because of her life style.Three great mystery writers, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett, were part and partial to everything that happened, and used the material for their books.A very satisfying read that tells a story that most of us either are unaware of, or only know of pits and pieces of what really was the Los Angeles of the 1920's. less

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