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

An overview of organized crime in Los Angeles from the Roaring 20s to the laid-back ‘70s, L.A. Noir: The Struggle For The Soul Of America’s Most Seductive City by John Buntin is a quick read, filled with interesting anecdotes and characters, but ultimately it leaves the reader wanting more.Any book trying to tell a multi-decade story about a subject as complex as crime in one of the country’s largest cities is either going to be as big as a phone book or it will skim over a lot of details. I wasn’t looking for an in-depth analysis and the prose is both colorful and readable, giving the reader a good sense of the various time periods.The pace moves quickly, beginning with Prohibition and ending with an epilogue during the Rodney King riots in the early 1990s, Mr. Buntin uses the stories of two men on opposite sides of the law as guideposts for the narrative.William Parker was chief of the Los Angeles Police Department for 39 years, and has been called the greatest and most controversial chief in LAPD history. Parker was definitely an alcoholic and possibly a racist (if not by commission, certainly by omission). He learned all the tricks of political infighting and used loopholes in L.A.’s City Charter, some of which he put into place, to maintain his own position of power. A man who saw conspiracies (Communist, Mafia or Black Muslim) around every corner, Parker viscously attacked anyone who suggested his police department was ineffective or could be improved.On the other side of the fence was Mickey Cohen, a locally born gangster and amateur boxer who also spent time in Chicago, New York and Cleveland. An associate of Bugsy Siegel and friend of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, Cohen was an unrepentant killer and inarticulate hothead who later in life remade himself and became a media darling and foe of Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Cohen was also an obsessive-compulsive who took hour-long showers and changed clothes several times a day.Along with Kennedy and Sinatra other big names made appearances, and Mr. Buntin does a good job detailing the beginning of the Watts riots in the mid-60s, but curiously enough other famous events go unmentioned, particularly the “Onion Field” killings in 1963 and the Manson family murders in 1969. True, other books have examined these events in much greater detail, but given both occurred in the timeline of the story and had bearing on other themes addressed (Onion Field killings resulted in a change in police tactics and Manson wanted his killings to spark the race conflict he felt was simmering in L.A.), I would have expected at least a mention.Bottom line, if you’re interested in the subject, this is a great opening read. Lots of interesting stories that introduce the key people and themes readers who want to learn more can use to pursue in-depth histories.

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. "So penned F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1925 classic, "The Great Gatsby." It was about New York at that time but it could have just as easily been Los Angeles at the outset of Paul Buntin's 2009 "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City."The author focuses the dynamic growth of Los Angeles from the 1920s on, its image and growing pains through the personalities and ambitions of two of its most celebrated figures and their rivalries: Mickey Cohen, the colorful wisecracking crime boss, and William H. Parker, the tenacious determined Los Angeles chief of police.Many other well known personalities make cameo appearances: Los Angeles Times publisher, Harry Chandler; notorious syndicate leaders, Bugsy Siegel, Jack Dragna and Sam Giacana; Columbia Pictures head, Harry Cohn and screenwriter Ben Hecht; entertainment personalities such as Jack Webb, Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner (of course, Johnny Stompanato); a young evangelist, Billy Graham; later the Kennedy brothers and their rivals, both political and underworld; lastly, with the Watts riots, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the rise of Tom Bradley and Ronald Reagan.It’s a lot to cover.Initially, Buntin's style is crisp and entertaining with a mix of clean factual details balanced by wry wit. The early history and course of the two protagonists is comfortable and easy to follow as well as the side trips into other aspects of their respective worlds. It’s great writing and hard to put down, especially when the relentless ambitions and quirky personalities are such fascinating contrasts to each other.Then, something dark casts a shade on both men: for Mickey it is both opportunity and his internal need to control the outcome of his efforts, making sure "the fix" is in; for Parker it is a need to protect his ambitions, their realization in an organizational sense and, ultimately, his "world view." There are no acceptable alternatives.At this point the story becomes more complicated because the dynamics of Los Angeles bring into play more people, more groups and more challenges for the author to keep the storyline focused.And to some extent, by the 1970's Cohen and Parker are more symbolic of past styles and values. In fact, the failings of their protégés underscore this transition. The allure of the original "noir" days is no longer so easy to capture.The author's handling of the 1964-Watts riots and their recurrence in 1992 is detailed and balanced in terms of considering both the police and protestor perspectives. It is clear that by the last riots the mechanisms for organized crime management and for police intervention and control that worked a few decades earlier had broken down.Los Angeles had outgrown its roots and no longer fit within the comfortable framework of the two dominant personalities around which the earlier story worked so well. And Buntin’s style shifts to a more journalistic approach with less of the earlier humor.So what made Los Angeles so seductive, as Raymond Chandler has stroked, that people like Cohen and Parker seemingly fought over its soul?It may have really begun much earlier in the 1880s when 10,000 people lived in the dusty town and the first refrigerated railroad cars filled with oranges left California and made their way east. The hype of the Southern Pacific “Big Four” (Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, C.P. Huntington) promised sundrenched lands and lives rich in comfort to the shivering masses in the Northeast and Midwest.And they came on the promise and without a clue what mystery awaited them.

Bought as a present - the recipient loved it.

A fantastic look at the corruption and evolution of LA throughout the 20th Century, framed through the mirrored lives of Bill Parker & Mickey Cohen. Well recommended.

A real good book shows the hypocracy of power and big business corruption in high places, walking hand in hand with organised crime. Got a real insight of the character of Mickey Cohen and Bill Parker, the reality behind the facsade of the American dream.

good read for anyone who has read elroy or chandler

This well written and extensively researched history of Los Angeles from the 1920`s to the Rodney King riots in 1992, focuses on the often brutal, racist and corrupt police department (LAPD) and organized crime.The two chief protagonists are the despotic, hard drinking Chief William Parker and gangster boss Mickey Cohen, who took over after his mentor, Bugsy Siegel ran afoul of the Mob in trying to establish a high class gambling casino in Las Vegas. The book is also filled with interesting sidelights, such as the relationship between Sammy Davis Jr. and Kim Novak, and the strange friendship Billy Graham had with Mickey Cohen , trying to get him to become a born again Christian. (Good luck with that !).A fascinating book, which was the basis for the TNT mini-series, "Mob City".