The Italian edition of the book by James Ellroy with Glynn Martin, director of the Los Angeles Police Museum, subtitled Los Angeles Police Department, 1953. The master of hardboiled fiction lends his pen to a collection of the photographs taken by forensic officers at the scenes of the crimes committed in Los Angeles in 1953, selected with Martin from the archives of the police department’s museum. 1953 was one of the bloodiest years in the city’s history, and eighty-five black and white pictures, taken on arrival at the scene and during the first examinations, bear witness day after day to robberies gone wrong, murders in filthy alleys or squalid motel rooms, bodies buried in gardens or thrown down embankments, controversial investigations and suspicious suicides: the dark side of the city of sequins and glossy magazines. Behind the façade of the city that symbolises the American dream, Los Angeles hides murky origins of property speculation, illegal trafficking and murder. The pictures are as merciless as the texts that accompany them.