Angel in Black

 

I am in such a book slump. Nothing is appealing to me. I froze all my holds at work because books kept coming in and I would check them out and they would sit by my couch for three weeks, untouched, before I would have to bring them back because they have holds. 

I remembered liking the Heller mystery by Collins I read a few months ago, and decided to give another Heller mystery a shot. It was pretty good and I enjoyed it, but it didn't help me finish anything else I've started.

In late 1946, Heller's girlfriend Peggy breaks up with him and runs off to Vegas with Bugsy Siegal. Heller goes on the rebound and starts up a fling with a waitress he meets in Chicago named Beth. Beth disappears from his life but Peggy comes back, wanting to reconcile, and the two elope and go to Hollywood for their honeymoon. Heller has a partnership in a detective agency out there, which is footing the bill for the fancy hotel. 

Heller is in the car with a reporter friend of his when something interesting comes across the police radio: a potentially drunk, passed out woman lying naked in an empty lot. Heller and Fowler are the first on the scene and Heller takes pictures for Fowler. He realizes that he knows this woman: it's Beth from Chicago. And she'd called him at his hotel a few days earlier to tell him she was pregnant with his baby. 

Whoops.

Heller knows he can't let on that he knows the girl, otherwise he'll be Suspect Number One. So Heller plays dumb and gets dragged into what ends up being the biggest unsolved murder in Los Angeles history: the Black Dahlia. Collins did a really excellent job coming up with a theory who killed Beth Short, one I had not heard before in my extensive readings on the case.