Angel in Black — Max Allan Collins

Her quest for Hollywood fame ended in an abandoned lot --in a murder so sordid that the details are hidden from the public. The newspapers call her the Black Dahlia. Nathan Heller knew her as Elizabeth Short. But revealing their relationship will only mark the Chicago private eye, in L.A. on his honeymoon, as a suspect. His unofficial investigation begins with what he knew of the doomed wannabe starlet, with her crazed phone call to him just days before her death, and with her bizarre links to the likes of Orson Welles, Eliot Ness, and Mickey Cohen. But opening old wounds means exposing new secrets. And each one will draw Heller deeper into an inescapable maze...and closer to the terrifying truth at the heart of a notorious crime.