A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age

"Noir is more than just a slice of cinema history; it's a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the senses like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day." That's a noir-ish description of the noir tradition of Los Angeles, written by Richard Rayner in _A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age_ (Doubleday). The descriptions of crime in old Los Angeles are familiar to all of us because of the books of writers like Raymond Chandler and the movies made from them, but Chandler was not writing in a vacuum. He had come back to L.A. in 1919 after fighting in France, and went to work in the oil business that was booming in the area. He learned cynicism from business, and saw the city's corruption, and thus came his novels. He was well acquainted with the many true crimes that Rayner covers, and through Rayner's book we get to see the city as Chandler saw it. There is lots of skullduggery covered in these pages, but it focuses on 1931 when Charlie Crawford was shot to death. He was a devout churchgoer who was utterly corrupt, and he oversaw all the crime within the L.A. underworld. He was shot in his protected office, and it was a complete surprise that the shooter was Dave Clark. He was a fighter pilot and war hero, a champion golfer, a smooth dresser with movie-star good looks, and with a beautiful wife who adored him. He was an L. A. native who had become an ambitious lawyer and city prosecutor, and was running for judge. He had, unfortunately, been too eager to make his advancements happen, and was involved in the sort of rackets that Crawford oversaw. What he was doing in that office, and why he shot the two men within are still not clear, but his firing the shots was never in question, although his attorneys used a claim of self-defense. Hollywood loved the stories of one kid gone wrong and one gone right; if Clark was the former, then the latter was Leslie White. From being a reporter, he became a mostly self-taught investigator at the prosecutor's office where he had been a colleague of Clark's. The crime and corruption ground down his optimism and he would eventually become a writer of pulp fiction, but his works were not nearly at the level of Chandler. He had to testify against Clark, and give his photographic evidence. "I was forced to forget how much I liked the man," he was to write later. Rayner enjoys taking a wide look at not just the overall political corruption nor crimes he describes, but at broader connections. He thus has supporting appearances by Fatty Arbuckle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charlie Chaplin, with many others. The main murder case, although Clark's motives remain a mystery, is genuinely compelling, making the book a page-turner. The city of Los Angeles itself figures highly, almost as a character in the story,

If you like real trials with flamboyant lawyers and witnesses;police,prosecution and political corruption;and plenty of greed,graft,sex and murders....you will love this read. A Bright and Guilty Place was Orson Welles' term for twenties and thirties L.A.Did you know L.A. supplied one-fifth of the World's oil then?Did you know the L.A. rackets and the "system" were so tough that Al Capone sniffed around L.A.for an expanded market and returned to Chicago the next day after a little "talk"?Did you know the "It" Girl,Clara Bow,slept with everyone including then USC football player John Wayne? Richard Raynor's research is pure academic-his acknowlegements go on and on,but he writes like Raymond Chandler(who is in the book from that era),not literally, but with a pithy fun style that really keeps you eagerly turning pages...a great,juicy read.

I struggle while reading history books. It often causes unpleasant flashbacks to homework and research sessions. "A Bright and Guilty Place" succeeds in capturing the feel of Los Angeles and the wild personalities that inhabited it during its development without ever being dry or boring. The setting is so artfully described and the characters so richly portrayed that I was transported to the seedy underbelly of LA in its adolescence. I had just as much fun reading about the setting and background for the plot as I did the actually story.

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

For those who've not yet discovered Richard Rayner, he is the author of an unflinchingly honest memoir of youthful bad behavior and obsessive book thievery (`The Blue Suit'), one of the most amusing "first encounters with L.A." novels (`L.A. Without A Map'), a spot-on L.A./Vegas noir (`The Devil's Wind') and one of the great romantic novels (`The Cloud Sketcher') of the last decade which manages to combine the Finnish Civil War, the Roaring 20s, and mad skyscraper-love, paying tribute to the best aspects of both the film and the novel of Rand's `The Fountainhead.' Up to that point Rayner was only just revving his engine: the next three books, each better than the last, are a triumvirate of well-told tales that tread the same path as the popular histories of Simon Winchester, Erik Larson, and the legendary David Halberstam. The first of these was `Drake's Fortune' the story of a particularly American con game too big, brassy and bold to be true - but of course it was; the second, last year's `The Associates' a brief yet toothsome account of the rise of California's `Big Four' railroad barons during the Gilded Age; and now Rayner's best book to date, the aptly titled `A Bright and Guilty Place,' a dizzying tour of Los Angeles in the 20s, starring an Ellroyesque cast of gang lords, cops, entrepreneurs, writers, whores, city officials, and movie stars hip-deep in booze, betrayal, and murder. I live in Los Angeles, teach U.S. history, and have read McWilliams, Davis, Starr, not to mention all of the fictioneers that have painted such vivid portraits of the City of Angels, yet, in the words of the late, great Spalding Gray, I had to "leave it to a Brit to tell me about my own history." This is a perfect summer read; Rayner has knocked another fast pitch out of the park.