Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner

Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner, by Tony Blanche & Brad Schreiber. 2001 first printing softcover. 192 pages, very nice condition.

Currently registering about 200 deaths a day, the L.A. County Coroner's office has solved some of the most lurid crimes in America, has pioneered some of the most trusted methods of forensic science in the world...and is the only one in the country to have a gift shop. This is the first authorized history of the City of Angels by way of its coroner's office, revisiting important or high- profile cases that remain mysterious even if they've been solved. Many of their investigations are now legend (the Black Dahlia, Bugsy Siegel, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, Nicole Brown Simpson), and others, while not as infamous, are no less bizarre (the California funhouse dummy that was discovered to be a 100-year-old embalmed gunslinger from Oklahoma). Dramatic black-and-white photos--many never published--paint a sordid landscape of murder, mutilation, and madness from the frontier to the front page. Features a section on Dr. Thomas Noguchi, often referred to as "Coroner to the Stars."