L.A. '56 by Joel Engel is subtitled: A Devil in the City of Los Angeles. It is a true crime story written more in the mode of fiction. The conversations are actually "recreated" or in my words: fabricated. They are based on facts, interviews, testimony and so on.
Much of the story is based on extensive interviews with Detective Danny Galindo. Galindo "...prefers carefully picking and choosing how people move in and out of his life."
I told both Doug and Phil (enough times to be boring myself, knowing I was repeating myself) that I took a dislike to John after he announced we were going to be friends for a long time and that he was going to be coming over to my apartment as well as knocking on my back door. I told both Doug and Phil that was not proper to inform a lady of such a thing, yet dagnabbit did not Doug announce that I was his "new best friend".
To use a word that was repeated several times in L.A. '56 I was discombobulated when Doug said that. Or, like Galindo, I choose who I allow to come into my life.
Danny also respects "the honest crooks with a gun (unless they pull the trigger) more than the swells who're born to it yet still take more by telling the gullible what they want to hear about how pretty or talented they are. The rich know that people with nothing think people with everything can be talked into giving them anything."
I have never been close to being rich, yet have dealt with people who think they can con a woman with flattery. Pain in the arse they are.
Danny suspects a murderer "...is too clever to do the obvious."
"Danny's to closer t figuring out why any man would think he's entitled to take what he wants from a woman who doesn't want to give it." That is about rape, but hit home due to Doug and Phil and perhaps even Jay ~ men who can not leave a woman alone even though she has indicated that she is not interested.
I did not think I would forget homeless mentions, but I have. They were not specifically about homeless people. One was a woman who had to put up her house for a bail bond and could be "moved onto the streets" if she lost it. The other probably made mention of a transient, leaving town after committing rapes, making detection of a serial rapists hard to do.
That is a bit easier now than it was back in 1956.
L.A. '56 was a good read.
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