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Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood
by William J Mann
Illuminating and captivating, New York Times bestselling author of Tinseltown and Bogart offers the first definitive account of the Black Dahlia murder—the most famous unsolved true crime case in American history—which humanizes the victim and situates the notorious case within an anxious, postwar country grappling with new ideas, demographics, and technologies.
The brutal murder of Elizabeth Short—better known as the Black Dahlia—in 1947 has been in the public consciousness for nearly eighty years, yet no serious study of the crime has ever been published.
Short has been mischaracterized as a wayward sex worker or vagabond, and—like the seductive femme fatales of film noir—responsible for and perhaps deserving of her fate. William J. Mann, however, is interested in the truth. His extensive research reveals her as a young woman with curiosity and drive, who leveraged what little agency postwar society gave her to explore the world, defying draconian postwar gender expectations to settle down, marry, and have children. It's time to reexamine the woman who became known as the Black Dahlia.
Using a 21st-century lens, Mann connects Short's story to the anxious era after World War II, when the nation was grappling with new ideas, new demographics, new technologies, and old fears dressed up as new ones. Only by situating the Black Dahlia case within this changing world can we understand the tragedy of this young woman, whose life and death offer surprising mirrors on today.
Mann has strong opinions on who might've killed her, and even stronger ones on who did not. He spent five years sifting through the evidence and has found unknown connections by cross-referencing police reports, District Attorney investigations, FBI files, court documents, military records, and more, using the deep, intense research skills that have become his trademark. He also spoke with the families of the original detectives, of Short's friends, and even of suspects, and relied on advice from experienced physicians and homicide detectives.
Mann deftly sifts through the sensationalized journalism, preconceived notions, myths, and misunderstandings surrounding the case to uncover the truth about Elizabeth Short like no book before. The Black Dahlia promises to be the definitive study about the most famous unsolved case in American history.
"A meticulous study of an infamous murder, and a debunking of its conspiracy theories...A sober, well-researched study of a case whose notoriety obscured its subject." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A meticulous and humane reconsideration of one of America's most sensationalized unsolved murders...Mann sets out to restore complexity and dignity to a woman long reduced to tabloid caricature...For true crime devotees and Black Dahlia obsessives, this is a must." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The empathetic Mann does an excellent job of humanizing Short, the 22-year-old murder victim, in the context of postwar Los Angeles...Mann's Black Dahlia book may have just replaced John Gilmore's nonfiction volume Severed and James Ellroy's fictionalized take The Black Dahlia in the true crime canon." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Impeccable...[Mann] draws from all manner of official records, interviews with people who personally knew the original case investigators and suspects, contemporary news reports, and previously published theories. He applies rigorous logic and common sense to the mountain of evidence and theories, arriving at a conclusion that sounds very much like it might be what actually happened." —Booklist
"I've read nearly all the Black Dahlia books and this is by far the most balanced, thoughtful and sweeping one and, thankfully, it clears up countless myths and untruths about Elizabeth Short and restores her to the status of a real person, a young woman much loved by friends and family." —Megan Abbott, author of El Dorado Drive
This information about Black Dahlia was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
William J. Mann is a New York Times bestselling author of The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando, for which he was granted access to Brando's private estate archive, as well as Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (named a Notable Book of the Year by the Times); Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (praised by USA Today for its "meticulous research and insightful analysis"); Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger, for which he worked closely with the Oscar-winning director; and The Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury America. His book Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Mann is a professor of film and popular culture at Central Connecticut State University.
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