Except, perhaps, this one: Like the men and women in its crime novels, the city, a multicultural diary of splendor and hurt, is its own character: grisly, sini

Except, perhaps, this one: Like the men and women in its crime novels, the city, a multicultural diary of splendor and hurt, is its own character: grisly, sinister, smooth, sly, urbane, verbose, sparse, fatalistic, celebratory, hopeful and occasionally as doomed as James Ellroy’s "Black Dahlia."