In 1947 the bloodless, mutilated and dismembered body of Elizabeth Short was discovered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. She was an ordinary girl, but a fantasist and had fallen through the trapdoor of Hollywood into the pit of cocktail waitressing and prostitution, serving the needs of Hollywood 'names' and the Mob. She was known as the Black Dahlia, and from the moment her remains were found has been at the centre of one of the 20th Century's most enduring mysteries. The discovery of her body led to a frenzy of often ill-informed press speculation, and over the years Donald Wolfe has discovered that several journalists were duped into creating fanciful theories, particularly those who worked for the Hearst newspapers. Wolfe also learned that evidence had been destroyed or damaged, and each piece of information he gleaned pointed to an orchestrated cover-up. Then a chance meeting with one of the police investigators gave him the final piece of the puzzle, so that he can now reveal not only the truth about her murder, but also the to identify those whose actions kept the case unsolved for so long.