of homosexual murders that are being investigated by a sheriff's deputy named Danny Upshaw. The work of Meeks and Upshaw also crosses paths with the investigations of Mal Considine and Dudley Smith, who are working on a communist case of their own. The third novel, L.A. Confidential, spans about eight years—from early 1950 to about April 1958. The story begins on February 21, 1950, when Buzz Meeks is found at an abandoned auto court where he is hiding out. Meeks is killed by Dudley Smith, and the 18 pounds of heroin Meeks stole from a Jack Dragna-Mickey Cohen truce meeting is subsequently retrieved by Smith. A year later, Bloody Christmas occurs: the beating of unarmed suspects by LAPD officers on Christmas Day. Ed Exley, Bud White, and Jack Vincennes are the main officers caught in the scandal. On April 16, 1953, the Nite Owl Massacre becomes the focus of the LAPD. The massacre involved the killing of civilians in an all-night restaurant. Three African Americans are the suspects. While resisting arrest, they are gunned down by Exley, who is proclaimed a hero. Years pass, and new evidence emerges that the African-American youths were innocent of the Nite Owl killings. The case is reopened. Ultimately, between Exley, White, and Vincennes, a criminal conspiracy involving Smith, Stensland, and Meeks is uncovered. It involved Mickey Cohen, the drug rackets, pornography, the stolen heroin from years back, a chemist trying to alter the chemical compound of the heroin to improve it, framing the African-American youths, and at the center of all of it, Dudley Smith. In the end, Smith escapes prosecution. The Nite Owl gunmen are killed, as well as other conspirators in Smith's scheme. Bud White ends up a cripple. Jack Vincennes is killed in the line of duty while trying to stop prisoners from escaping. Ed Exley, now chief of detectives, loses his father, who commits suicide. Although they despised each other at first, Exley and White become friends. Exley swears to White he will bring Dudley Smith down. The final novel in the L.A. Quartet is White Jazz, told from corrupt LAPD officer Dave Klein's point of view. As a policeman, Klein has broken the law numerous times, beaten suspects, stolen, bribed, worked for the mob, and had people killed, as well as being a murderer himself. In late 1958, Klein, the commander of Administrative Vice, is assigned a burglary of