L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City (Hardcover)

~ John Buntin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Buntin, a crime writer for Governing magazine, chronicles the complex, interlocking lives of brutal gangster Mickey Cohen and durable police chief William Parker, telling their stories against the backdrop of Tinseltown from the 1930s to the '60s. The author adds to the mix the colorful cultural and political saga of the star-struck metropolis, a city ripe for a bitter power play between the crooks and cops, rampant with drug dens, pleasure palaces, illegal gambling and other assorted vices. The ruthlessness of Cohen, an heir to "Bugsy" Siegel, and the deadpan determination of Parker are placed in proper context with the seminal events of Prohibition, the Red scare, the federal crackdown on mobsters, and the Watts riots. Packed with Hollywood personalities, Beltway types and felons, Buntin's riveting tale of two ambitious souls hell-bent on opposing missions in the land of sun and make-believe is an entertaining and surprising diversion-as well as a sobering look at the role of the LAPD in fomenting racial tensions in L.A. 16 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley The image of Los Angeles that exists in the minds of many here in the effete East only occasionally coincides with the reality. We sneer at it as Lala Land or pine for its beaches and vistas and endless summers, but we let ourselves forget that it's a city of heavy manufacturing -- as well as a city that lies under the constant threat of devastating fires. We delight in the classic L.A. crime novels of Raymond Chandler and the contemporary ones of Michael Connelly, but we have only the vaguest understanding that the crime and corruption they depict are not aberrations but essential to the city's character. Skeptics are referred to "L.A. Noir." John Buntin tries to cram too much into its pages and writes in cliched journalese, but he persuasively argues that what ultimately shaped Los Angeles was not its sublime location but the hard truth that, as he puts it, "by the early 1920s, Los Angeles had become a Shangri-la of vice." Buntin, who writes for Governing magazine, has unearthed in the history of 20th-century L.A. a pervasive criminality that is far more appalling than anything to be found even in the most brutal novels of James Ellroy. He views it through the lives of two men: William H. Parker, who became chief of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1950, and Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen, a celebrated, ruthless and flamboyant crook. Buntin writes: "For three decades, from the Great Depression to the Watts riots, Parker and Cohen -- the policeman and the gangster -- would engage in a struggle for power, first as lieutenants to older, more powerful men, then directly with each other, and finally with their own instincts and desires. . . . Their contest would involve some of the most powerful -- and colorful -- figures of the twentieth century: press magnates Harry Chandler and his nemesis, William Randolph Hearst; studio head Harry Cohn of Columbia; entertainers Jean Harlow, Jack Webb, Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner, and Sammy Davis Jr.; and civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. The outcome of their struggle would change the history of Los Angeles, set race relations on a dangerous new path, and chart a problematic course for American policing." That's saying a lot, and in fact it's saying too much. All of these people played roles in shaping Los Angeles, and their stories always make for interesting reading, but their connections to Parker and Cohen ranged from moderately close to marginal. Like many other journalists who have tried to write history -- in particular, oddly enough, journalists who try to write the history of California -- Buntin looks for patterns and parallels where they don't always exist and insists on them even when their validity is questionable. Perhaps the "struggle" between Parker and Cohen can be viewed as a metaphor for the evolution of the city -- between, if you will, its light and dark sides -- but to boil down a very complicated history to the actions of just two men is to oversimplify and distort that history. So ignore Buntin's efforts at Deep Meaning and concentrate instead on the stories of these two men, played out against the backdrop of a city that, though it feared becoming the Chicago of the West, in fact often outdid Al Capone's home town in sordidness, venality and violence. When Bill Parker joined the LAPD in 1927, he was in for a surprise: "In Los Angeles, the police didn't fight organized crime. They managed it." This was almost literally true. Parker might not have needed all 10 of his fingers to count the number of honest cops in the city, and there were probably fewer honest people elsewhere in the city's government. For all its natural beauty and seductive climate, L.A. can be a very dirty place. Throughout much of the first half of the 20th century, the city's underworld was controlled by a group of men "who were known simply as 'the Combination' " and who worked hand in glove with city hall and the LAPD. Everyone was on the take. The police force was poorly educated and trained, deeply hostile to the minority groups that were beginning to become a significant presence in the city, frequently drunk on the job and not overly bright. "IQ tests administered in the early twenties found that a significant number of police officers were 'low-grade mental defectives.' " Parker, who was "smart, assertive, and incorruptible," wanted to become chief of police from almost the moment he joined the force, but he had to play guileful office politics in order to move up through the many levels of corruption that stood between him and that job. Mickey Cohen lived in Los Angeles as a boy and "at the age of nine . . . began his career in armed robbery with an attempt to 'heist' a movie theater in downtown L.A. using a baseball bat." He worked his way east, trained as a boxer and fought a few bouts as a featherweight, but went back to Los Angeles in 1937 "to serve as gangster Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel's right-hand man." It's true that this "was a job that put him on a collision course with Bill Parker," but it's scarcely as though each man had eyes only for the other. Cohen was one of thousands of criminals (in and out of the underworld) whom Parker wanted to bring under control, and Parker was just one of many cops who stood in Cohen's way. One of the most daunting difficulties faced by the few honest men in the LAPD before Parker became chief was that the department was not autonomous but "subordinate to some combination of the mayor, the underworld, or the business community (or sometimes all three)." In 1937 the city's voters approved a charter amendment that gave the LAPD "the legal protection it needed to emerge as a power in its own right," but it wasn't until Parker took command that the department began to achieve true autonomy. This proved to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Parker was able to hire 1,400 new officers after World War II, "90 per cent of whom had served in the military" and were eager to work under strong leadership such as they had known in the service; the quality and training of the officer corps rose markedly. On the other hand Parker was no civil libertarian. He eagerly embraced wiretapping and other surveillance techniques, and didn't hesitate to authorize officers to break and enter in order to put these devices in place. He was almost entirely insensitive to the city's rising African American population, doing nothing to discourage the police brutality that climaxed in the Watts riots of 1965, one year before his death. His legacy remains a matter of strong debate in Los Angeles and among students of law enforcement. As for Mickey Cohen, it wasn't Bill Parker who brought him down but the feds, who sent him to the penitentiary in 1952 on tax evasion charges and again in 1961 for the same offense. He outlived Parker by nearly a decade, dying in his sleep in 1975: "With back taxes, penalties, and interest, he still owed the U.S. government $496,535.23." In the 31/2 decades since then, Los Angeles probably has become a better place to live for law-abiding citizens, which probably has very little to do with either Bill Parker or Mickey Cohen. John Buntin has made an entertaining tale out of their adventures, but don't try to read more into it than is there. [e-mail]
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Harmony (August 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307352072
• ISBN-13: 978-0307352071
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,871 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Easy Beginning, Muddled Middle, Uneven Ending, June 30, 2009

By	Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews

Buntin is a writer for "Governing" magazine. According to Wikipedia, "it's a monthly magazine...whose subject area is state and local government in the United States. The magazine's circulation is approximately 85,000, most of whom are elected, appointed or career officials in state and local government." It's also a source as an authority for citations by the national media.

The book starts off with a bang, literally, describing the 'wild west' mentality in LA at the beginning of the century; and some of Mickey Cohen's more memorable 'rub outs'. Buntin is best when he's describes Mickey and 'The Mob', and the further back he starts the more sensational and interesting the background stories are. When he finally get's to the meat of the story, which is to be Mickey Cohen (i.e. Semi- organized Crime) and Police Chief William Parker, he begins to jumps around with dates and periods.

One of the failures of the book is that Butin is trying to write alternate chapters about one or the other main protagonists in the book, but at the time of the the major event of Parker's career (the Watts Riots) Cohen is in jail and no way involved. In fact it has nothing to do with 'organized crime' at all; most of the criminals at this point are gang based and totally disorganized.

The latter part of the book is all Parker and the 'civil rights' movement and race problems in LA, not to mention the inadequate size of the LAPD and living in the 'forties' mentality of the upper levels of the LAPD. Though Butin does put some of the blame on Parker for his inability to change with the times, he's constantly making excuses for him and tries to dump some of the blame on his successors. The problem with 'passing the buck' is that these men trained under Parker and were so set in the ways of the LAPD that they couldn't see the problems.

Butin especially comes down hard on Chief Daryl Gates and his involvement in the "Rodney King Riots". But Gates has been a whipping boy for everything that went wrong at that time in LA (Mayors Yorty and Bradley seem to skate through the problem). Though Butin makes a side comment about some of Bradley's problems as mayor (relating to misspent funds and corruption) he puts little blame on him. This could be in part because of Butin's ties to "Governing", and Bradley's legacy in the Black community of LA.

Butin also seems to have a grudging respect for Cohen and all of the Mafia Dons. Yes, they were larger than life and colorful, but Mickey is thought to have been involved in up to thirty murders (though he 'never killed anyone who didn't deserve it', in his own words). Butin spends an inordinate amount of time describing Mickey's wardrobe and toileting habits (his one hour showers), not to mention his eating habits. This part feels like he didn't have enough to write so he just kept throwing in the same points over and over.

Zeb Kantrowitz

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great history, July 28, 2009

By	C Wahlman "cdub" (Merrillville, IN) - See all my reviews

First, let me explain that I did in fact like this book. However, I was ready for something a little more engaging. The description had me begging for this book. But alas, I was bored at some points and merely struggled through it. I am glad that I read it, but I wish I would have known that the description was just to tantalize: the "struggle" for LA's soul was written from a bureaucrat's love of detail.

This text was overflowing with details, notations, and citations. It would be an excellent source for a paper or history class. The author's style is professional and clean. It is never confusing: you always know exactly what he is stating. Buntin obviously devoted a lot of time and thorough research before he exacted this book.

The one fault of Buntin as an author is that he never injected his spirit as a writer into the book. The lack of such a personal touch amounted to a fascinating history, but nothing more. The story was interesting, but it was told in a way that made it a chore to read, which is unfortunate.

I will have a difficult time picking this up again, or recommending it to friends without a heavy warning.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating history, well told, July 19, 2009

By	H. F. Gibbard "Noir Guy" (Dark City, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"L.A. Noir" is a fascinating study of organized crime in Los Angeles and the politics of policing it from the Twenties to the Sixties. It's an entertaining read that I found hard to put down. The book has everything: mob hits, police brutality, corruption, violence, glamor, and pathos. The author focuses on two major figures whose lives spanned this period: the gangster Micky Cohen and LAPD officer and chief Bill Parker. The two eventually became bitter enemies in a struggle for the soul of the city.

For most of the time period covered, the LAPD resembled a mercenary army, subject to being bought off or bribed by one mob faction or another. Los Angeles was a wide open city, where crime flourished and no one tried too hard to bring the Syndicate to heel. While this sometimes led to wild instability and brutal killings, at other times the mob was able to reach an accommodation with the police and city hall, known as the "Combination." For a while, the Combination controlled L.A.

Mickey Cohen was a lackluster boxer and low-life hood who rose to the top in the criminal underworld in Los Angeles. His chief strengths appear to have been absolute ruthlessness and a complete lack of fear. He stood up with almost crazy resolve, especially in the early days, to mobsters much more powerful than he was, almost daring them to kill him. His recklessness paid off. Bugsy Siegel made him his right-hand man, and when Bugsy eventually dropped out of the picture, Mickey ascended to the top spot. He had it all: wealth, power, respect, and the company of beautiful women.

But Cohen had an adversary, a nemesis in Bill Parker. Parker was an odd duck: personally incorruptible but flawed by his heavy drinking, narrow-mindedness, and fits of rage. Over decades he worked to insulate the police department from political pressure, a key facilitator of corruption. When he finally made it to the top, he went after the mob with a vengeance. He suffered from a strange form of Cold War paranoia, believing that organized crime served the nefarious purposes of Communism. He would later bring the same unfortunate linkage to his view of the Civil Rights movement, with tragic results.

The sidelights in this book are what really makes it fun. Whether it's Billy Graham trying to convert Mickey Cohen, the mob coming down on Sammy Davis, Jr. for dating Kim Novak, the use of Jack Webb's "Dragnet" to burnish the LAPD's image, a look at the politics of wiretapping, or Mike Wallace's interview with Mickey Cohen (in which Cohen called Parker a "degenerate"), the book is full of colorful anecdotes, containing one fascinating revelation after another.

The book ends with an exploration of the LAPD's tragic bungling of the Watts riots, laying the failure at part at Parker's own feet. It is a rich reminder of the man's multifaceted character and his flaws. I highly recommend "L.A. Noir" for its fascinating history of crime corruption in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles.