"LA Noir" is a Hollywood movie genre that goes back to Double Indemnity and includes Chinatown and LA Confidential. It's all about "a city of big dreams and cruelly inevitable disappointments." Those are the words of Richard Rayner, who says "noir" has roots not just in the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but also in the history of Los Angeles in the 1920's and early ‘30's. His latest book is A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption and LA's Scandalous Coming of Age.
