First of all, I love the cover design of the book. It looks like a pulp novel and some of it fittingly reads like a gangster story.There have been other books about the Black Dahlia murder, the advantage that this book has over earlier volumes is that the author had access to documents that were not available to writers tackling the subject for previous publications, simply because - back in the day - the LAPD files were still sealed.
This book now tells a fascinating story of the entanglement of Hollywood, the Mob, the media, and law enforcement. Since so many people seemed to be in cahoots in the 1940s, the murder (and other crimes, obviously) remained unsolved and the person(s) responsible were never persecuted.
The conclusion is, then - and there seem to be evidence and witness statements to support it -, that Elizabeth Short (for that is the victims name) was killed by Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegler and three of his henchmen, possibly orchestrated by media mogul Norman Chandler, who the Dahlia was rumoured to be pregnant by. The body was put on display near the residence of Jack Dragna, who headed the mob for a big portion of the city, in an attempt to frame him. Dragna's name never appeared in any files (thanks to his connections to the LAPD) and he in return had Bugsy Siegler killed five months later, again an "unsolved" crime.
A really good read.
7/10
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