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 author of the true crime biography: L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood (2025) published by Third State Books. She is the Assistant Vice President of Faculty Programs and Initiatives and Professor of Asian American Studies at California State University, Northridge. She has previously served on the faculty of Swarthmore College, the University of Kansas and California State University, Dominguez Hills. She is also an Andrew Mellon Fellow and an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Ethnic Studies Fellow. She lives and writes in Los Angeles, where she is working on her next true crime book.