(3.2) I've said this before if you want to read crime fiction of LA in the 40's-70's, read James Ellroy, but then read the Ez Rawlins mysteries to get a handle on the black side of town during those turbulent, lawless times. Some of the tropes of the genre are here: the femme fatales and the loose women, the cops on the take and the desperate folk living on the margins of a city; however, the gamechanger is that the detective's black and that gives his desperation, his lone gunman like mentality a sheen of isolation and drama that's lacking in other smart workings of detective fiction.