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“Choi's true-crime biography adds much-needed detail and perspective to Noguchi's unusual and compelling story.”
—BooklistL.A. Coroner is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial “Coroner to the Stars,” who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, and hundreds of other notable personalities. Choi, an award-winning historian and professor, deftly blends Los Angeles history, death investigation and forensic science, and Asian American history in a feat of exquisite storytelling.L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time. His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye.
Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s–80s television drama
Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases,
L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity culture.
About the author
Anne Soon Choi, Ph.D., is a historian and professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her essay “The Japanese American Citizens League, Los Angeles Politics, and the Thomas Noguchi Case,” on which this book is based, won the 2021 prize for best essay from the Historical Society of Southern California. Choi has previously served on the faculty of Swarthmore College and the University of Kansas and is an Andrew Mellon Fellow and an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Ethnic Studies Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Summary
L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death
in Hollywood is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial “Coroner to the Stars,” who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, and Natalie Wood. It blends Hollywood celebrity and
death, Asian American history, and Los Angeles history in a feat of exquisite storytelling. L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death
in Hollywood is the first ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief
Medical Examiner-Coroner of the County of Los Angeles from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious
career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies
of some of the most high-profile personalities of his
time. His elaborate press conferences, which often
generated more controversy than they did answers,
catapulted him into the public eye.
Noguchi was also the
inspiration for the popular 1970s/80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman.
Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a
mesmerizing, meticulously researched true crime
biography, set against the backdrop of the racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity
culture
