Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood

By WILLIAM J MANN and William J. Mann

Book Overview

New York Times bestselling author of Tinseltown and Bogart offers the first definitive account of the Black Dahlia murder--the most famous unsolved true crime case in American history.

The brutal murder of Elizabeth Short--better known as the Black Dahlia--in 1947 has been in the public consciousness for nearly eighty years, yet no serious study of the crime has ever been published.

Short has been mischaracterized as a wayward sex worker or vagabond, and--like the seductive femme fatales of film noir--responsible for and perhaps deserving of her fate. William J. Mann, however, is interested in the truth.

In his masterful, critically acclaimed biography, Mann humanizes Elizabeth Short like never before. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a meticulous and thorough retelling, five years in the making, that resists the sensationalism of the infamous crime to restore dignity back to this young woman's image," The Black Dahlia is the definitive study about the most famous unsolved case in American history.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1668075903
• ISBN13: 9781668075906
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.2"