“Like a lot of noir novels, the career of Douglas Anne Munson, a hard-boiled Los Angeles writer who once seemed like one of the city’s bright new lights, just gets murkier and more confusing the closer you look.” It remains elusive even as champions of the novelist, who used the pen name Mercedes Lambert and died in 2003, ensure that her work gets another chance at the spotlight. “‘She wrote mystery novels,’ said Michael Connelly, who never knew Munson but called her first novel, ‘El Niño,’ … a major influence on his work. ‘But she was probably the biggest mystery of all.'”