The first definitive account of the Black Dahlia murder, which humanizes the victim and situates the notorious case within an anxious, postwar country grappling with new ideas, demographics, and technologies.
Admirably researched and generous ... Does Mann solve the crime? I think so — or at least he comes as close as one can to finding a plausible solution so many years after the fact.
Although Mann’s effort stands apart from the overlong run of books about the case, it, too, is undercut by the need to name a likely suspect, playing into the true-crime imperative it aims to leave behind.
