Customer Reviews

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

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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.

"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, with fantastic corruption at all levels, involving police, lawmakers, preachers, tycoons, and journalists. Anyone who likes the books or films of _The Long Goodbye_, _The Big Sleep_ or _Farewell, My Lovely_ is going to find this terrain familiar, and all the more strange for not being imaginary.

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.

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.

There was a lot to enjoy in this book. As an LA resident and history dork it's always great to get a glimpse into the early years that helped define this city. The author weaves together various different people, different eras and different story lines and tries to pull them all together under the umbrella of "noir" LA. The problem for me was that at times this made the book lose some of it's potential impact. Telling the intertwining stories of Leslie White and Dave Clark gave the book a great core to focus on and the perfect case study for delving into LA's long relationship with corruption. It's when it spins off from there that it gets a bit muddled. Granted these were interesting anecdotes, but it made the book feel like there should either have been more or less instead of the in between that it actually is. Still there was some fascinating stuff covered in the book and it was definitely worth the 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

I should start by saying this is not a bad book per se, and if your interested in early 20th Century seediness, you'll find it here. The trouble with Rayner's account of an almost forgotten murder in 1930s Los Angeles, is that it tries to stretch this account into something bigger. The hero here is Leslie White, a photographer, lawman, Roaring 20's CSI who just happens to be in the right place at the right time to be witness to a number of historical highlights; the San Francisquito Dam disaster, the Doheny Murder/Suicide, etc. He rubs shoulders with LAs good and bad, but this is not enough for a driving, motivated story. The climax, of sorts, here is the murder of Charlie Crawford, at the hands of former prosecutor Dave Clark, but really very little of the book is dedicated to this story point. The author spends as much time providing a biography of Raymond Chandler ("The Big Sleep") as a subplot, as he does in following the main players, White, Clark and Crawford. Still, the reader, especially the Los Angeles native/resident, will find some interesting history here, even if that history is pretty mean.

A BRIGHT AND GUILTY PLACE: MURDER, CORRUPTION AND L.A.'S SCANDALOUS COMING OF AGE is an engrossing story of the real world behind the headlines of noir fiction greats such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Author Richard Raynor, a long-time Los Angeles resident, follows the crimes and lives of a young idealistic D.A.'s investigator and a young prosecutor who becomes involved in L.A.'s darker times. Crime lords, gangs, and high drama true to real life events: it's all here, and perfect for any true crime library.

A Bright and Guilty Place is a short, sensational look at LA history in the 20's and 30's. One thing is clear. It couldn't exist without Raymond Chandler. Richard Rayner co-opts Raymond Chandler, for Chandler fed off the same LA stories. Rayner uses Chandler to define the city's past and, somewhat anachronistically, its present. What we get is noir cynicism and apathy and the noir impulse to wryly endure. Chandler was an exceptional talent whose Philip Marlowe novels I absolutely love. But, Chandler was also an alcoholic and a failed business executive. I think a little resentment was in order. When Rayner comparatively cites LA's endless sunny days as an example of its tedium, it's time for Rayner to get outside and recreate.

LA noir reflected the corruption of the 20's and 30's and there was plenty of it. But, Los Angeles hardly cornered the market. New York and Chicago were famously corrupt without provoking such systemic literary cynicism. The difference was in expectations. LA writers expected more. They expected LA's endless sunny days to result in endless sunny lives. When that didn't happen, skepticism and disappointment guided their words.

A Bright and Guilty Place is a continuum. It is the story of Leslie White and Dave Clark - two employees of the district attorney's office. The former was a gee-whiz, new kid on the block, who parlayed his fractured idealism into a pulp fiction career. The latter was the typical big man on campus, a nattily dressed prosecutor who succumbed to the temptation of organized crime. It is all very noir. And, frustratingly, the conclusions drawn by the author are so very mimetic. LA = disillusionment. Yes, we've got it. Contrary to the claims of others, we don't need a Brit to tell us about our own history when he relies on a premise so readily available.

Nevertheless, A Bright and Guilty Place is a quick, intermittently urgent read. It wanders a bit, loses its focus, tangentially grabbing coincidental events for gravy, but I can abide these distractions. I don't offer a strong recommendation, but if you're interested in LA history, it should be worth your time. 4 stars.

Heavily biased as I am toward the California noir genre, I really enjoyed this book. It uses the trial of a LA DA, Dave Clark, for killing a local crime baron and a journalist, and the brief career of a minor investigator in the LAPD, Leslie White, who testifies at the trial among other trials, as a pair of crossbeams on which to hang a broad and entertaining survey of crime and corruption in LA from about 1912 to about 1933. Every significant member of the DA office, the LAPD, successive mayors and numerous journalists are shown to have bribed, been bribed, extorted, murdered, etc. The real life foundations of the films, Chinatown and LA Confidential, and several Raymond Chandler stories are covered, as are many criminal trials of celebrities and the Teapot Dome scandal. It read briskly, although the last several chapters dragged a bit. It reminds me of the book "Charlatan" that came out a couple years ago, covering essentially the same period, using the same device of weaving in numerous brief anecdotes involving famous people even if not tightly tied to the main plot and conveying the same bleak view of human motives and conduct.