Black Dahlia, Red Rose The crime, corruption, and cover-up of America's greatest unsolved murder

FIVE-CARAT SOUL, by James McBride. (Riverhead, $27.) In his debut story collection, the author of the National Book Award-winning novel "The Good Lord Bird" continues to explore race, masculinity, music and history. McBride's stories often hum with sweet nostalgia, and some even dispatch a kind of moral. THE APPARITIONISTS: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost, by Peter Manseau. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.) Manseau's expedition through the beginnings of photography and its deceptions is a primer on cultural crosscurrents in mid-19th-century America. GIRL IN SNOW, by Danya Kukafka. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) Danya Kukafka's bewitching first novel spins a spell of mournful confession around a "Twin Peaks"-like centerpiece. In Kukafka's capable hands, villainy turns out to be everywhere and nowhere, a DNA that could be found under the fingernails of everybody's hands. DUNBAR, by Edward St. Aubyn. (Hogarth, $26.) In this latest entry in Hogarth's series of contemporary reimaginings of Shakespeare's plays, "King Lear" is recast as a struggle for control over an irascible father's corporate empire. St. Aubyn's version, not unlike the play itself, turns out to be a thriller. THE POWER, by Naomi Alderman. (Little, Brown, $26.) In the future of this fierce and unsettling novel, the ability to generate a dangerous electrical force from their bodies lets women take control, resulting in a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe. BLACK DAHLIA, RED ROSE: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder, by Piu Eatwell. (Liveright, $26.95.) An account of the brutal killing of a beautiful young woman that also delves into the broader culture of postWorld-War-II Los Angeles. "Her story," Eatwell writes, became "a fable illustrating the dangers posed to women" by Hollywood. AFTER THE ECLIPSE: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search, by Sarah Perry. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.) This memoir moves swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy, as Perry searches through the extensive police files pertaining to her mother's murder, when Perry was 12. THE DARK NET, by Benjamin Percy. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26.) The fate of the world in Percy's novel depends on the ability of a motley gang of misfits to head off the satanic forces emanating from the murkiest recesses of the internet. GHOST OF THE INNOCENT MAN: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, by Benjamin Rachlin. (Little, Brown, $27.) Rachlin writes about Willie Grimes, imprisoned for 24 years for a sexual assault he did not commit, in this captivating, intimate profile. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

The 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short and the ensuing hunt for the so-called Black Dahlia killer baffled the LAPD and fascinated the public at the time, and has been studied by crime historians in the decades since. In this ambitious but overstuffed account, Eatwell (The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse) too often gets tangled up in the web of mystery surrounding the still-unsolved crime rather than unraveling it. When a young woman's bisected body was discovered in Los Angeles' Leimert Park on Jan. 15, 1947, identifying her proved challenging for LAPD detectives. From the outset, the press took a strong interest in the case, particularly the Los Angeles Examiner and the Herald-Express. It was ultimately the Examiner that first identified the victim as 22-year-old Short, after the staff sent the corpse's fingerprints to the FBI. In agonizing detail, Eatwell catalogues the LAPD's struggle for answers, even after the discovery of Short's luggage, containing an address book filled with potential suspects. Often preoccupied with tracing the corruption scandals that ran rampant within the LAPD, Eatwell, who oddly becomes a character in the narrative at the end, makes a convincing case for the Black Dahlia killer's identity, but takes far too long and far too twisted a road to get there. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Seventy years after the murder of Elizabeth Short, infamously called the "Black Dahlia," sent shock waves through Los Angeles, Eatwell (The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse) presents a thoroughly researched look at the crime and subsequent investigation conducted by the LAPD. Eatwell successfully paints a portrait of the city and its police department, signifying that the cover-up and corruption involved in this case (as well as throughout the department) was a product of the time and not reflective of today's practices. Although the featured photographs will likely be familiar to true crime sleuths who have studied the case, many of the supporting documents are full of previously unreleased information pertaining to Short's murder. Eatwell has included files (many of which are newly available) from the LAPD and FBI investigations as well as interviews. VERDICT The investigative materials provide a solid foundation for Eatwell's film noir-style narrative; a first purchase where true crime titles circulate widely.-Mattie Cook, Lake Odessa Comm. Lib., MI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.