Nocturne Books - Non-Fiction

Black Dahlia Avenger
by Steve Hodel

The Black Dahlia murder is the most infamous unsolved murders in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Short, drifter turned Hollywood party girl lived the high life until the good times ended with her brutal slaying. [more]

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A Cast of Killers
by Sidney Kirkpatrick

An illustrated account of the 1922 murder of flamboyant director William Desmond Taylor reconstructs the events leading up to the crime and speculates about the possible murderer. Author Kirkpatrick succeeds wonderfully in a portrayal of Tinseltown beginning to tarnish. Chock-full of exact locations and seedy asides, it is a must-read for fans of LA history.

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City of Nets : A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's
by Otto Friedrich

This dazzling story of Hollywood during the 1940s is a social and cultural history of the movie capital's golden age. Its cast includes actors, writers, musicians and composers, producers and directors, racketeers and labor leaders, journalists and politicians in the turbulent decade from World War II to Korea. (1997)

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City of Quartz
by Mike Davis

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, L.A. is a sun-lit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs as well armed as Beirut militias. In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.'s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel West - a city in which we may glimpse our own future, mirrored with terrifying clarity. (1990)

William Gibson calls it "A visionary rant about the secret meaning of Los Angeles... absolutely fascinating. It's more cyberpunk than any work of fiction could ever be."

Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner
by Tony Blanche and Brad Schreiber

The Los Angeles County Department of Coroner solved some of the most lurid crimes in American history, pioneered some of the most trusted methods of forensic science in the world...and is the only such office in the country to have a gift shop. Death in Paradise is the authorized story of Coroner's Office investigations of those infamous cases that are now legend, including the Black Dahlia, Bugsy Siegel, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, and Nichole Brown Simpson. Illustrated with crime scene photos and never-before-published confessions, suicide notes, and laboratory reports from the Coroner's Office archives, Death in Paradise delivers a profile of the deadly side of that glamorous, modern-day oddity that is Hollywood. (1998)

Down by the Station : Los Angeles Chinatown, 1880-1937 (Monumenta Archaeologica (University of California, Los Angeles. Institute of Archaeology))
by Roberta S. Greenwood

The only book we've been able to find about Los Angeles' Chinatown, underground where Union Station now stands; and the history and political scandal of the times.

Ecology of Fear : Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
by Mike Davis.

As in City of Quartz, his earlier book about Los Angeles, Davis reveals the deeper ideological narratives behind historical events. Whether he's explaining the motivations behind the persistent refusal of civic leaders to admit that a tornado alley runs down the middle of the region, from Long Beach to Pasadena, or discussing, as one chapter refers to it, "the case for letting Malibu burn," he outlines his arguments with a fascinating amount of detail and a subtle sense of irony. There are wonderful chapters here, such as "Maneaters of the Sierra Madre," a zoology of the wild beasts Angelenos fear, including mountain lions that descend from the hills to eat joggers and small children, swarms of Africanized killer bees making their way across the deserts, and El Chupacabra, the "goat-sucking vampire" that joined L.A.'s roster of faddish icons in 1996.

Fallen Angels - Chronicles of L.A. Crime and Mystery
by Marvin Wolfe and Katherine Mader

Fallen Angels is an exhaustively researched crime collection from every era of the glittering dream factory called Los Angeles: The famous crimes featuring such "luminaries" as Fatty Arbuckle, Charles Manson, and John Belushi, as well as those committed by ordinary citizens, their dementia fueled by bathtub gin or angel dust.

These startling accounts include:
Christina Griffith loses an eye. Convinced in his alcoholic delirium that his wife was trying to poison him on orders from the Pope, Griffith placed a prayer book in her hands and shot her in the right temple...
Robert James, the rattlesnake murderer. Once he'd put his pregnant wife's leg in a box with two rattlers, he hauled her lifeless body out back and told the police she had tripped and drowned in the six inches of pond water in the back yard...
The Venison Connection. Winnie Ruth Judd calmly shot her two friends with whom she argued in her Arizona bungalow. Then she calmly chopped them up, loaded them into trunks and took the train to L.A. By the time she arrived, one of her trunks reeked, and the baggage clerk, warned to watch for venison being illegally smuggled in from Nevada, demanded she open it...

And - for the strong of heart - much much more... (1986)

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The Fragmented Metropolis : Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Classics in Urban History, Vol 3)
by Robert M. Fogelson

Here with a new foreword, a new preface, and an updated bibliography is the definitive history of Los Angeles from its beginnings as an agricultural village of fewer than 2000 people to its emergence as a metropolis of more than 2 million in 1930 - a metropolis whose distinctive structure, character, and culture foreshadowed much of the development of urban America after World War II. (1967)

Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving - Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City
by John Chase

In this free-wheeling guided tour to the cityscape of Southern California, from movie-star mansions to the alleys of the homeless, urban planner John Chase combines gossip, anecdote, archival research and tabloid-worthy self-revelation, grounding architecture as a multi-disciplinary art. Speeding across the California landscape, Chase pauses frequently to see what's really there: not just what the movies have taught us to expect, but the range and variation of the built environment that occupies what he calls 'everyday space'. A practising architect and urban planner, as well as an important architectural critic, Chase explores a myriad of locales and examines their architectural features--from the gay community space of West Hollywood, to the stucco box apartment complexes of the 1950s, to the truly weird mix of domestic arrangements in Venice Beach, to gated communities, to some of the historic houses of Hollywood and Beverly Hills and to the most recent transformations of the casino architecture in Las Vegas. At once learned, witty and ironic, Chase makes the mundane world of Southern California vistas come alive on the page. (2000)

The Great Los Angeles Swindle - Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties
by Jules Tygiel

The Great Los Angeles Swindle begins with a murder (the sudden courtroom shooting of banker Motley Flint, the debonair movie financier and city booster), ends with a spectacular suicide in Shanghai, and, in between, takes as many unexpected twists and turns as any mystery novel. Jules Tygiel offers a gripping account of this wonderfully complex scandal, which features such legendary figures as Louis B. Mayer, Cecid B DeMille, Charlie Chaplin (who decks Julian in a fist-fight in Hollywood's posh Cafe Petroushka), Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, H.M. Haldeman (grandfather of Watergate's H.R. Haldeman), and pioneer radio evangelist "Fighting Bob" Shuler. Bankers, conmen, underworld kingpins, political bosses, corrupt public officials, bribed jurors, and other colorful characters round out the cast.

L.A. Inside Out - The Architecture and Interiors of America's Most Colorful City
by Paddy Calistro, Betty Goodwin

A unique look at America's trend-setting metropolis reveals how L.A.'s terrain, history, and culture have influenced its architecture, interior design, and decorative arts.

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LA Follies - a Critical Look at Growth Politics & Architecture
by Sam Hall Kaplan

Design and Other Diversions in a Fractured Metropolis (1989). Sam Hall Kaplan, design critic of the Los Angeles Times and author of the best-selling L.A. Lost & Found, reveals

Why L.A. Looks the Way it Does
Whose City Is It, Anyway?
Strip Mining the Urban Lode
Architecture, For Better or Worse
Streets, Trees and Traffic
Preserving the Past
Special Places
Special People
Personal Prejudices

Murderer With a Badge : The Secret Life of a Rogue Cop
by Edward Humes

Profiles Los Angeles police officer William Leasure, a mild-mannered officer married to a prosecutor, who, unbeknownst to his wife or fellow cops, used his badge as a cover for a decade-long crime spree of burglary, adultery, and murder.

My Dark Places : An L.A. Crime Memoir
by James Ellroy

In 1958, when James Ellroy was 10 years old, his mother's body was found in a run-down town near Los Angeles. The murderer was never found; the case remains unsolved. This remarkable book--part unflinching autobiography, part vivid reportage--tells an extraordinarily gripping story about the failed murder investigation, uncovering Ellroy's daring, revelatory journey into and through his most forbidding memories. 14 photos. (1996)

My L. A.
by Matt Weinstock

Every once in a while I find a book on our shelves that I didn't know we owned, or forgot we bought."My L.A." is one of those books. When I started flipping through it, I realized I'd rediscovered a gem - it was like finding a $20 bill in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn for a while. [more]

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To Protect and Serve - the LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams
by Joe Domanick

From the foundation of the LAPD and culminating with the Rodney King trial, this book covers the LAPD in regards to it's history of corruption and violence.

With the current Rampart Division scandals, the book offers a frame of reference that puts the kibosh of the newscasters tendency to expound on "the worst scandal in the history of the LAPD".

This book was the winner of the 1995 Edgar Award for best fact crime.

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Severed - the True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder
by John Gilmore

The Black Dahlia murder hit post-War Los Angeles like a bombshell. Beautiful Elizabeth Short's naked body was found drained of blood and cut in half. This, the first true-crime book published on the strangest of all "unsolved" murders in the annals of modern crime, offers the solution documented by law enforcement and forensic experts. Here, for the first time: the killer's own frightening statements on the gruesome murder. That 'truth is stranger than fiction' has never been so terrifyingly evident. (1994)

Sins of the City: The Real Los Angeles Noir
by Jim Heimann

In a veritable barrage of photographs from the twenties to the fifties, "Sins of the City: The Real Los Angeles Noir" documents the criminal misdeeds and blossoming cityscape that inspired writers and filmmakers to immortalize this most hard-bitten of metropolises. From venues as disparate as rough-and-tumble roadhouses in the middle of nowhere to urbane nightclubs catering to the Hollywood elite, a bizarre cast of characters haunt these pages. Crime lords and corrupt cops; seers, mystics, and kooks; two-bit chippies and penny-ante gumshoes, they're all here, rendered in sensational black-and-white. This fact-filled, illustrated history exposes the lurid truth about the City of the Angels as it really was back in the days of noir. (1999)

The Sleepy Lagoon Mystery
by S. Guy Endore

The book of the Sleepy Lagoon murder later depicted in the movie "Zoot Suit". Out of print and hard to find - look for it in used book stores.

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Somewhere in the Night - Film Noir and the American City
by Nicholas Christopher

Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance.

Thicker'N Thieves - the Factual Expose of Police Pay-Offs, Graft, Political Corruption and Prostitution in Los Angeles and Hollywood
by Ex Vice-Squad Officer Charles Stoker

This is the full, fearless expose by former vice-squad officer, Charles Stoker, of the shocking and unbelievable graft and corruption which prevail in the city government of Los Angeles....

...Where corrupt police officers, venal politicians and office-holders claimed to have been fighting the underworld, Stoker fought it personally, furiously and with everything at his command to the point where he was framed and fired for "CONDUCT UNBECOMING AN OFFICER" because he testified to the facts before the 1949 Los Angeles Grand Jury.

This book chronicles the episode in L. A. history which put a stop to the above-board graft and agency-wide corruption in the city. The rift that developed between the LAPD and the LA County Sheriffs due to the actions of Brenda Allen, a Hollywood Madame, and Mickey Cohen, the north-side crime kingpin, exists to this day. (1967)

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The Zoot-Suit Riots: the Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation
by Mauricio Mazon

Los Angeles, the summer of 1943. For ten days in June, Anglo servicemen and civilians clashed in the streets of the city with young Mexican Americans whose fingertip coats and pegged, draped trousers announced their rebellion. The causes of the rioting were complex, as Mazon demonstrates in this illuminating analysis of their psychodynamics. Based in part on previously undisclosed FBI and military records, this engrossing study goes beyond the zoot-suit riots in the context of both Mexican American and Anglo social history. (1984)