A Bright And Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, And L.A.'s Scandalous Coming Of Age (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
The best bits of the book are the quotes from Raymond Chandler,example: 'Outside the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in the light.'and: 'The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather grey for California, and had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building...'. Richard Rayner also uses quotes from newspapers, court records, memoirs, diaries, biographies and eye witnesses, but he himself is the writer of most of the turgid prose. It is something of an achievement to make such larger than life characters and such a vibrant time and place sound so dull.Here is another quote from Raymond Chandler, 'Law is where you buy it'. If this book had been a straightforward narrative account of L.A.'s history from the end of the First World War through the Great Depression, it could have been brilliant. The two central characters, in all their indulgences and idiosyncrasies, beautifully embody the tale of crime and corruption, fame and its misfortunes, all under the brilliant lights of Hollywood.But A Bright and Guilty Place is two books, really. One is that account from an experienced Los Angeles journalist, a tensely written history that deftly conveys a distant reality through the intersecting paths of two men, one an investigator-turned-pulp fiction writer, the other a promising attorney seduced by the glitter of Los Angeles. The other is a work of literary analysis, with the author dissecting the works of Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and other lesser-known L.A. writers who established the conventions of the "hard-boiled detective novel" -- and attempting to add depth and insight to the history by citing their observations.The story at the center of A Bright and Guilty Place is that of Leslie White (the investigator) and Dave Clark (the lawyer), and it focuses on the two-year period in which they collaborated in the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney on a series of celebrated trials. The characters for whom they worked -- as well as the ones they brought to justice -- were straight out of Chinatown, which the author seems to regard as a faithful portrait of official L.A. in the 1920s and 1930s. "The System" ruled. At its helm was a crime boss, Charlie Crawford, who never looked the part, and rarely acted it, either. Charlie called the shots, with the mayor, the police chief, the D.A., and practically everyone else who mattered in official L.A. doing his bidding -- right up until someone shot and killed him with a .38 revolver. But who killed Charlie Crawford was never much of a mystery. The man who did it was none other than celebrated trial attorney Dave Clark. Therein lies the tale.
What do You think about A Bright And Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, And L.A.'s Scandalous Coming Of Age (2009)?
Some good details here and there, but overall a disappointingly amateurish and sloppy book.
—dayshflorida96
Hard time keeping all the "characters" straight...
—abael
A fascinating read for anyone who knows LA now.
—drea1551
A must read for any Raymond Chandler fans.
—Rachel
