L.A. Noir by John Buntin

From The Week of September 03, 2012 Corruption is a pervasive force. An infection as rife among the righteous as it is among the morally bankrupt, it plays no favorites. Why should it? It matters not to corruption what manner of man falls beneath its seductive sway, only that he does, only that he tastes its sweet fruit, learns its cunning ways and extends its dark doctrine. Corruption does not have an agenda. It offers only opportunities by which the willing, and the desperate, can avail themselves, opportunities sure to enrich them while swelling its ranks of converts. The golden age of Los Angeles learned this lesson all too well, a truth demonstrated with style and skill by Mr. Buntin's excellent biography of the coming of age of a global city.

Originally envisioned as a white spot, a safe harbor for caucasian Americans in an ever-more immigrant United States, Los Angeles would swiftly shake off this narrowminded mantle to explode onto the world stage as the foremost destination for glitz and glamour. Thanks to Hollywood, it would come to be invested with the hopes and dreams of millions the world over, millions who would sacrifice all but the shirts on their backs to arrive in its beautiful basin, to sample its seductive wears, to try to make it big in a town with the power to vault the nameless into the stratosphere of the celebrity.

With fortunes being minted on a nightly basis, it's unsurprising that Los Angeles would become a magnet for crime. However, the degree to which the powerful institutions of this city of dreams were corrupted by outside influences would leave even hardened cynics slackjawed with shock. After all, for nearly two decades, from the 1920s to the 1940s, a Combination of crooked cops, hardened gangsters and officials on the take ran Los Angeles. They established rackets, endorsed black markets, profited off of gamblers and skimmed off all manner of vices. Through a mixture of brutality and ruthlessness, they ensured that justice would be available to the white man, scarce to the criminal man, and all-but non-existent to a man of any other color or minority.

This amoral status quo was challenged in the 1940s by the methodical rise to power of William H. Parker, one of Los Angeles' most zealous cops. Notoriously straight-laced in this city of sin, he became a crusader for police power, using a combination of intelligence, legal expertise and persistence to finally elevate himself to the cultivated post of chief of police. From this lofty height, he set out to reform his sprawling town of millions, coming up hard against not only resistance within his own crooked ranks but the powerful interests of organized crime, represented by the infamous Mickey Cohen, entrenched in the city. Time and again, Parker and Cohen would square off for control of the city, driving the former into paranoia and authoritarianism and the latter repeatedly into prison where justice was no less scarce than on the star-studded streets of L.A.

A fascinating stroll through the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles' most golden era, L.A. Noir is a dark and delightful clash of powers that have long since lapsed into legend. Mr. Buntin's lively prose captures the stylishness and the impishness of these gilded decades, managing to induce, in the reader, as many laughs, at the exploits of its unforgettable characters, as grimaces, at the blood and corruption that drenched and controlled its streets. Cohen and parker, natural enemies, provide the work an excellent framework upon which the author fills in the history, good and bad, of a unique city in the grips of a unique time. Moreover, they permit the reader to conceive of just how thin a line exists between cop and criminal. For while one may swear to uphold the law and the other may swear to trample upon it, both can be equally and devastatingly ruthless in the per suit of their aims, leaving behind not only the ravished body of the law but the corpses of those many obstacles that had to fall in order for them to achieve their ends.

though Cohen, the boxer turned criminal, and parker, the hard-head turned police chief, provide the work an axis around which all else rotates, and though their life stories stand in for the numerous other figures who must have worked L.A.'s streets for good and or ill, they pale in importance to L.A. Noir's latter chapters. For as much as humor and panache enliven the first half of Mr. Buntin's history, the latter is consumed by a serious examination of the miserable race relations between the city's minorities and its police force from 1965 onward. From the Watts Riots to the Rodney King incident, Mr. Buntin soberly captures the scandals that deeply tarnished the reputation of the LAPD and the degree to which these incidents were outgrowths of the ambitions of men like Parker who sacrificed all for the sake of their own goals. Thus, while L.A. Noir entertains, it also leaves its readers humbled by a true taste of ruthlessness, both its execution and its costs.

A well-balanced history of a city enchanted by vice and power... Mr. Buntin neglected to do justice to the final years of Mickey Cohen, but in every other respect a captivating read. (4/5 Stars)