A compendium of historic crimes and strange occurrences in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles

In 'Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir', historian Nathan Marsak tells the story of the Hill, from the district's inception in the mid-nineteenth century to its present day. Marsak commemorates the poets and writers, artists and activists, little guys and big guys, and of course, the many architects who built and rebuilt the community on the Hill - time after historic time. Any fan of American architecture will treasure Marsak's analysis of buildings that have crowned the Hill: the exuberance of Victorian shingle and spindlework, from Mission to Modern, from Queen Anne to Frank Gehry, Bunker Hill has been home to it all, the ever-changing built environment.

This full-length anime action thriller follows the story started in the Sengoku Basara TV series, telling the story of a league of generals, who banded together to defeat an evil overlord, who threatened to dominate Feudal Japan. Now, their nemesis's loyal servant is on the warpath to avenge his fallen leader, and the fate of a nation once again hangs in the balance. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi

This book combines film studies with urban theory in a spatial exploration of twentieth century Los Angeles. Configured through the dark lens of noir, the author examines an alternate urban history of Los Angeles forged by the fictional modes of detective fiction, film noir and neo noir. Dark portrayals of the city are analyzed in Raymond Chandler’s crime fiction through to key films like Double Indemnity (1944) and The End of Violence (1997). By employing these fictional elements as the basis for historicising the city’s unrivalled urban form, the analysis demonstrates an innovative approach to urban historiography. Revealing some of the earliest tendencies of postmodern expression in Hollywood cinema, this book will be of great relevance to students and researchers working in the fields of film, literature, cultural and urban studies. It will also be of interest to scholars researching histories of Los Angeles and the American noir imagination.

An illustrated history of the iconic Hollywood neighborhood featured in numerous film noir classics—and the shadowy story of how it disappeared. When postwar movie directors went looking for a gritty location to shoot their psychological crime thrillers, they found Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of fading Victorians, flophouses, tough bars, stairways, and dark alleys in downtown Los Angeles. Novelist Raymond Chandler had already used its real-life mean streets to lend authenticity to his hardboiled detective stories featuring Philip Marlowe. But the biggest crime of all was going on behind the scenes, run by the city’s power elite. And Hollywood just happened to capture it on film. Using nearly eighty photos, writer Jim Dawson sheds new light on Los Angeles history with this grassroots investigation of a vanished place.

An ex-con struggles to adjust to life outside prison walls in “one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years” (James Ellroy). After eight years spent locked up, Max has gotten very good at being a prisoner. He knows the guards, the inmates, and how to survive. But the parole board has decided that he has sufficiently reformed, and it’s time for him to say goodbye. When Max reaches the outside world, he finds that freedom doesn’t make anything easier. Based on his own experiences in prison, Edward Bunker first drafted No Beast So Fierce in the 1950s, while incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison. He spent the next two decades in and out of jail, writing essays for various magazines and working on the novel, which was finally published in 1973. Eighteen months later, the book was used as evidence that he was fit to leave jail. He received parole, and spent the rest of his life a free man. Rooted in real-life experiences and hailed by Quentin Tarantino—who cast Bunker in his film Reservoir Dogs—as “the best first person crime novel I have ever read,” No Beast So Fierce is a gritty and compelling read like no other.

“The best novel about armed robbery ever written” from the Reservoir Dogs actor and ex-con author of No Beast So Fierce (James Ellroy). Troy was born in Beverly Hills but raised in the prisons of Southern California. Two days before his parole from reform school, a run-in with a young black tough threatens to derail his release. He prepares to fight, ready to sacrifice freedom to maintain his reputation, but a friend comes to his rescue. Armed with two razor blades, Mad Dog takes out Troy’s assailant, allowing his friend to go free. Troy does not forget the debt. Years later, Mad Dog makes a living on penny-ante heists, and Troy—who has grown into one of the smartest hoods in L.A.—is about to finish a stint in San Quentin. They join up with another old friend, Diesel Carson, and launch a spree vicious enough to put them in jail for the rest of their lives. But these three would rather die than return to prison.