Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood by William J. Mann

Red Sheet by James Ellroy (2026): "It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The U.S. prevailed. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from domestic Communist Party members embedded in L.A. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job. Freddy Otash is named lead investigator. He encounters commie malfeasance at every turn. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a murder on Halloween night. It links to ex-VP and gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and possibly two homicides eight years back. Now Freddy is working double duty: he’s commanding the probe and is hired to keep Nixon out of trouble. Meanwhile, integrationist fever is sweeping L.A. and the police department comes under its fire. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for city council and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride. And the long-forgotten but still-stunning folk singer Judy Henske is on a collision course with the love of her life, the freewheeling Freddy O." Source: amazon.com

Mystery writer Megan Abbott has already proclaimed Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood (2026) the best book she has read on the Black Dahlia case, evidently not pausing to consider just how low the bar is on this subject, given the dismal quality of the aforementioned books, plus John Gilmore’s Severed (1994), Janice Knowlton’s Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer (1995) and Don Wolfe’s Black Dahlia Files (2006), a work so fraudulent that it earned the author a lifetime ban by the district attorney’s office. Mining the well-traversed district attorney’s files in the Black Dahlia case, augmented with FBI reports, news accounts, public records, and occasional interviews with less-informed descendants of the main figures, Mann has amassed the ponderous resources for what could have been a strong book. Mann sets out with two laudable goals: To strip away the numerous myths surrounding Elizabeth Short, and to eschew any attempt to solve the case, which he views as hubris. Mann’s depiction of Elizabeth Short plunked down in Hollywood as Tom Sawyer in ankle-strap shoes brings us no closer to her. The book speculates wildly on one of the usual suspects in a far-fetched solution, then attempts to recant with a “never mind.” Elizabeth Short, the enigmatic victim of the murder, crossed paths with hundreds of random people during her brief time in Hollywood in the summer and fall of 1946. Instead of being the Black Dahlia, who went on hundreds of dates, Elizabeth Short was the woman who went on one date hundreds of times, a carefully scripted encounter with a parade of presentable men who were a safe escort. All but one, apparently. Source: ladailymirror.com