L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood
L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood
“Choi's true-crime biography adds much-needed detail and perspective to Noguchi's unusual and compelling story.”
—Booklist
L.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.
Anne Soon Choi
Anne Soon Choi is the Interim Associate Director of Online Pedagogy and Learning for the Faculty Development Center, and Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. She is trained as a historian and a gerontologist and is a specialist in immigration history and community-based care for older adults. Before her appointment at CSUDH, Choi was on the faculty at the University of Kansas. She has also held postdoctoral fellowships at Swarthmore College and UCLA. She earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Southern California and her MPH and MSW from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Amerasia, American Studies, Acta Koreana, and Health and Social Care in the Community.