A Bright and Guilty Place Murder Corruption and LA Scandalous Coming of Age (Audible Audio Edition) Richard Rayner Brett Barry Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : A Bright and Guilty Place Murder Corruption and LA Scandalous Coming of Age (Audible Audio Edition) Richard Rayner Brett Barry Audible Studios Books
Novels like The Big Sleep and L.A. Confidential, movies like Chinatown, even vampire TV shows like Angel, depict L.A. as existing in the shadows, no matter how bright the sun. That is the style we call noir.
In A Bright and Guilty Place, an exhilarating tale of murder in L.A., Richard Rayner finds the source of the city's darkness in real-life events that unfolded in the 1920s, when the booming early years of L.A. started to shade into the Depression, and the city of sunshine revealed the hidden darkness and corruption at its heart.
Rayner follows two very different characters Leslie White, a photographer and budding novelist whose job as a crime-scene investigator for the city prosecutor's office lands him right in the middle of some of the age's biggest scandals; and Dave Clark, a charming, handsome prosecutor-turned-political candidate whose ambition and voracious appetites drive him into the bowels of L.A.'s corrupt politics and perhaps even to murder. The two men live in an L.A. populated by corrupt preachers, dark-hearted oil barons, sexually perverse starlets, and hookers with a heart of gold. It is a city controlled by organized crime to such an extent that when Al Capone came to see about setting up a syndicate there, he was run out of town without a single shot fired. And the tension comes to a boiling point when the head of the crime syndicate, Charlie Crawford, is found murdered in cold blood and the chief suspect is none other than golden boy Dave Clark.
Raymond Chandler, that bard of L.A. despair, would later turn the travails of Dave Clark and Leslie White into the superlatively pessimistic fiction which has defined L.A. for generations. And in A Bright and Guilty Place, Richard Rayner has done something similar, transporting us to a turning point in the life of a great city. In the murderous events in these pages, we witness how sunny Los Angeles came of age - and got noir.
A Bright and Guilty Place Murder Corruption and LA Scandalous Coming of Age (Audible Audio Edition) Richard Rayner Brett Barry Audible Studios Books
If this book had been a straightforward narrative account of L.A.'s history from the end of the First World War through the Great Depression, it could have been brilliant. The two central characters, in all their indulgences and idiosyncrasies, beautifully embody the tale of crime and corruption, fame and its misfortunes, all under the brilliant lights of Hollywood.But A Bright and Guilty Place is two books, really. One is that account from an experienced Los Angeles journalist, a tensely written history that deftly conveys a distant reality through the intersecting paths of two men, one an investigator-turned-pulp fiction writer, the other a promising attorney seduced by the glitter of Los Angeles. The other is a work of literary analysis, with the author dissecting the works of Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and other lesser-known L.A. writers who established the conventions of the "hard-boiled detective novel" -- and attempting to add depth and insight to the history by citing their observations.
The story at the center of A Bright and Guilty Place is that of Leslie White (the investigator) and Dave Clark (the lawyer), and it focuses on the two-year period in which they collaborated in the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney on a series of celebrated trials. The characters for whom they worked -- as well as the ones they brought to justice -- were straight out of Chinatown, which the author seems to regard as a faithful portrait of official L.A. in the 1920s and 1930s. "The System" ruled. At its helm was a crime boss, Charlie Crawford, who never looked the part, and rarely acted it, either. Charlie called the shots, with the mayor, the police chief, the D.A., and practically everyone else who mattered in official L.A. doing his bidding -- right up until someone shot and killed him with a .38 revolver. But who killed Charlie Crawford was never much of a mystery. The man who did it was none other than celebrated trial attorney Dave Clark. Therein lies the tale.
(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)
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A Bright and Guilty Place Murder Corruption and LA Scandalous Coming of Age (Audible Audio Edition) Richard Rayner Brett Barry Audible Studios Books Reviews
Interesting history of LA
Excellent read!
Author, Richard Rayner's, A BRIGHT AND GUILTY PLACE has exquisitely recaptured both L.A.'s moods and methods from the 1920's and 30's. Rayner has done his homework, and to his great credit, his research is obsessively ON-POINT and ACCURATE. (Any author that starts out with correctly spelling "Angelenos," has a huge leg-up in my world.) Rayner uses two percipient witnesses from the period, Deputy D.A., Dave Clark and DA Investigator, Leslie White to help tell his story. We get to hear their actual words, as they interview and prosecute crime-lord bosses, and major film-stars. We partner with Les White and ride with him down the Sunset Strip in route to his history making investigation at the Doheny Graystone mansion. Murder or Suicide? We witness the corruption and trickery of both cops and robbers, and in the end, get to understand why Los Angeles became the NOIR capitol of the world--all is smoke and mirrors. Nothing is as it seems.
To my mind, the book's highest accomplishment is in its description and explanation of how "The System" (control and corruption by a few bad men) worked in Los Angeles. Gangsterism's M.O was uniquely different in L.A. than say Chicago, New York, or Detroit and Rayner does an excellent job of helping understand it from the inside.
A BRIGHT AND GUILTY PLACE is a great read and comes highly recommended. Gets my vote for an Edgar Nominee in the FACT BASED category.
Steve Hodel, Los Angeles
Bestselling author of, Black Dahlia Avenger A Genius for Murder
One of the best books in this genre I've read in a very long time. The author ranks up there with Sebastian Junger and Erik Larson for his story telling ability.
I always find it interesting to discover facts about people and places that I had never known before. Having seen the movie "Chinatown" many years ago, I had a small feel for the ambiance and corruption of L.A. in the early 20th century. This well-written book has given me much more insight into the area and what was happening there.
The book is almost like a "Who's Who" of the famous and infamous of L.A. in the first thirty or so years of the 20th century. Movie stars, politicians (both honest and corrupt), cops (also both honest and corrupt), famous writers, extremely wealthy folks, scientists, lawyers, etc., move quite easily through the pages. The work is written in a light, sprightly manner, and that makes it very easy to read and enjoy.
I've never been to L.A. (although my daughter has lived there for several years), but this book only heightened my interest in travelling there and seeing some of the sights that still exist even today from that time of almost a century ago.
If you like your social and political history light but interesting and entertaining, this book is definitely for you!
Excellent, informative book about the history of Los Angeles and what went on
I write novels set in California, some of them during the early years of the 20th century. So I read lots of books about that period. One of the best is Richard Rayner's A Bright and Guilty Place.
Rayner tells the life stories of an investigator and a lawyer, both employed by the District Attorney's office. One of them is heroic, one deeply flawed. Through their exploits and antics, Mr. Rayner exposes L.A.'s rampant and systemic corruption, the endemic collusion between government, law enforcement, and capitalists of all sorts including crime bosses.
What's more, if we stop to think, we may realize how universal is this social structure, which is rigged so that a select and avaricious few wallow in privilege and abundance while the rest serve as pawns and star-struck voyeurs.
At that point, some of us might pause and go for a drink, or mumble, "Damn, I don't think anything's changed."
A Bright and Guilty Place should be required reading for all who vote. It's that enlightening, as well as being a compelling story.
If this book had been a straightforward narrative account of L.A.'s history from the end of the First World War through the Great Depression, it could have been brilliant. The two central characters, in all their indulgences and idiosyncrasies, beautifully embody the tale of crime and corruption, fame and its misfortunes, all under the brilliant lights of Hollywood.
But A Bright and Guilty Place is two books, really. One is that account from an experienced Los Angeles journalist, a tensely written history that deftly conveys a distant reality through the intersecting paths of two men, one an investigator-turned-pulp fiction writer, the other a promising attorney seduced by the glitter of Los Angeles. The other is a work of literary analysis, with the author dissecting the works of Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and other lesser-known L.A. writers who established the conventions of the "hard-boiled detective novel" -- and attempting to add depth and insight to the history by citing their observations.
The story at the center of A Bright and Guilty Place is that of Leslie White (the investigator) and Dave Clark (the lawyer), and it focuses on the two-year period in which they collaborated in the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney on a series of celebrated trials. The characters for whom they worked -- as well as the ones they brought to justice -- were straight out of Chinatown, which the author seems to regard as a faithful portrait of official L.A. in the 1920s and 1930s. "The System" ruled. At its helm was a crime boss, Charlie Crawford, who never looked the part, and rarely acted it, either. Charlie called the shots, with the mayor, the police chief, the D.A., and practically everyone else who mattered in official L.A. doing his bidding -- right up until someone shot and killed him with a .38 revolver. But who killed Charlie Crawford was never much of a mystery. The man who did it was none other than celebrated trial attorney Dave Clark. Therein lies the tale.
(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)
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