L.A. '56: A Devil in the City of Angels

Los Angeles 1956. Glamorous. Prosperous. The place to see and be seen. But beneath the shiny exterior beats a dark heart. For when the sun goes down L.A. becomes the noir city of James Ellroys L.A. Confidential or Walter Mosleys Easy Rawlins novels. Segregation is the unwritten law of the land. The growing black population is expected to keep to South Central. The white cops are encouraged to deal out harsh street justice. In L.A. 56 Joel Engel paints a tense moody portrait of the city as a devil weaves his way through the shadows.. While R&B and hot jazz spill out of record shops and clubs and all-night burger stands Willie Fields cruises past in his dark green DeSoto looking for a woman on whom he can bestow the gift of his company. His brilliant idea: Buy a tin badge in the five-and-ten to go along with his big flashlight and Luger and pretend to be an undercover vice cop. The young white girls doing it with their boyfriends in the lovers lanes dotting the L.A. hills would never say no to a cop. Into the car they go for a ride downtown on a morals charge before he kicks out the young man in the middle of nowhere and takes the girl for a ride shell spend a lifetime trying to forget.. Theres a bad guy on the loose in the City of Angels.. Enter Detective Danny Galindo-hed worked the Black Dahlia case back in 47 as a rookie. The suave Latino-one of the few in the department-is able to move easily among the white detectives. Maybe its all those stories hes sold to Jack Webb for Dragnet. When Todd Roark a black ex-cop is arrested Galindo knows hes innocent. But theres no sympathy for Roark among the white cops on the LAPD; Galindo will have to go it alone.. Theres only one problem: The victims arent coming forward. The white press ignores the story too making Galindos job that much more difficult. And now hes fallen in love with one of the rapists first victims. If hes ever found out he can kiss his badge good-bye.. With his back up against a wall Galindo realizes that it will take some good old-fashioned Hollywood magic to take down a devil in the City of Angels.