This book is fine, it's exhaustively researched and very detailed, but I discovered it was more than I needed to know. I found my attention wandering here quite often. Which is sort of surprising, because first, I live in LA, so this a LOCAL worldwide famous case. And I read a lot of true crime, so I don't know why I didn't already know more than I did about it. I think the problem is that the murder remains unsolved. And it seems that there is little consensus among those who have investigated this case as to the identity of the killer. Also, there are so many fictionalized versions of this story, it's easy to get confused as to what are the cold hard facts, and what is legend. Another review suggests one should just read Elizabeth Short's Wikipedia page and you will get basically the same info, with less time expended. I did, and I agree.