Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood

Novelist and biographer Mann (Bogie & Bacall) delivers a meticulous and humane reconsideration of one of America’s most sensationalized unsolved murders. Rather than dwell on the lurid mythology surrounding the 1947 killing of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, whose mutilated body was discovered in a vacant Los Angeles lot, Mann sets out to restore complexity and dignity to a woman long reduced to tabloid caricature. Drawing on extensive archival research and overlooked police files, he traces Short’s troubled upbringing in Massachusetts and her zigzag path to Los Angeles after dropping out of high school. Mann challenges the image of Short as a “man-crazy” fame seeker, presenting her instead as a restless young woman navigating economic precarity and unstable housing. Through careful reconstruction of her final months, he charts her movements through Tinseltown’s underbelly of drifters and aspiring actors, exploring how the city’s culture of exploitation left her exposed. Though Mann revisits familiar suspects, he sketches a fresh and more plausible theory of her death without claiming absolute certainty. For true crime devotees and Black Dahlia obsessives, this is a must. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Malaga Baldi Literary. (Jan.)