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Three of Ellroy's most compelling novels featuring Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins in one volume. Blood On The Moon: 20 random killings of women are unconnected in police files. But Det. Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins sees a pattern. As he is drawn to the murderer, the two men face a confrontation pitting icy intelligence against white-heated madness. . . Because The Night: Jacob Herzog, hero cop, has disappeared. A multiple murder committed with a pre-Civil War revolver remains unsolved. Are the two show more cases connected? As Det. Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins pieces the puzzle together he discovers the darker threat of John Haviland, a psychiatrist whose pleasure comes from the manipulation of the weak and lonely. Suicide Hill: Duane Rice leaves jail with good news and bad news: two adulterous bank managers are ripe for squeezing, but Vandy, who he is obsessed with making a rock star, has disappeared. An orgy of violence erupts as Duane's partner goes beserk and Duane settles scores with knife and bullet. Leading the manhunt Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins stumbles on a horrifying conspiracy of corruption and betrayal- among his own colleagues. Ellroy's three great early novels are available in one volume for the first time - the books that led up to his LA Quartet. show lessTags
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A big of fan of Ellroy, I've read all but one of his books now. I like his early stuff a great deal, Clandestine and Brown's Requiem are easily amongst his best works. As a trilogy, I was a bit disappointed by this, although the first Hopkins book - Blood on the Moon - is a great standalone. It's just that Because the Night feels kind of superfluous and underdeveloped, and Suicide Hill, to my mind, shows the author reaching beyond but not quite making it. It's sort of an Ellroy-in-development piece. Suicide Hill started off giving me a big Charles Williford- Miami Blues vibe, in its simple set-up of soiled cop protagonist versus young criminal fresh out of prison. The Gaffaney angle an added extra, but he's not as developed as an out show more and out villain as Dudley later would be. All in all Suicide Hill shows Ellroy exanding his universe, but it isn't yet populated by the believable and gripping characters that would inherit his subsequent novels. I was also taken by the following passage, I don't know when it became public knowledge about Ellroy's mother, but it clearly resonates in this:
"Lloyd looked out at the window, knowing by the off-ramp signs exactly where he was. He strained his eyes to see Ray BEcker's Tropics, a bar he had worked as a vice officer fifteen years before. It wasn't there. The whole block had been razed. The corner was a Korean church. A thought crossed his ming. If the city became unrecognizable, and the blood eruptions became the only sign of permanence, would he go insane?"
Ellroy's seminal background incident, and his haunting relationship with LA, and his vocation as a writer are outlined right there, if you're keen enough to see them. show less
"Lloyd looked out at the window, knowing by the off-ramp signs exactly where he was. He strained his eyes to see Ray BEcker's Tropics, a bar he had worked as a vice officer fifteen years before. It wasn't there. The whole block had been razed. The corner was a Korean church. A thought crossed his ming. If the city became unrecognizable, and the blood eruptions became the only sign of permanence, would he go insane?"
Ellroy's seminal background incident, and his haunting relationship with LA, and his vocation as a writer are outlined right there, if you're keen enough to see them. show less
Early James Ellroy..and my favorite...also try Brown's Requiem and Clandestine.
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James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L. A. Quartet novels - "The Black Dahlia", "The Big Nowhere", "L. A. Confidential", & "White Jazz" - were international best-sellers. His novel "American Tabloid" was Time magazine's Novel of the Year for 1995; his memoir, "My Dark Places", was a "Time" Best Book of the Year & a "New Yorker Times" show more Notable Book for 1996. He lives in Kansas City. (Publisher Provided) James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles, California on March 4, 1948. His parents were divorced and he moved in with his father after his mother was murdered in 1958. The story of his mother's unsolved murder would become the basis for his 1996 nonfiction work entitled My Dark Places. He attended Fairfax High School, where he sent Nazi pamphlets to girls he liked and criticized JFK, while advocating the reinstatement of slavery. He was eventually expelled for preaching Nazism in his English class. He joined the army after his expulsion from school, but after realizing that he did not belong there, he faked a stutter and convinced the army psychologist that he was not mentally fit for combat. After three months, he received a dishonorable discharge and returned home. His father died soon thereafter. He was thrown in juvenile hall for stealing a steak from the local market. When he got out, his father's friend became his guardian, but by the age of eighteen, he was back on the streets. He was sleeping outside, stealing, drinking and experimenting with drugs. It wasn't long before he was thrown in jail for breaking into a vacant apartment. When he got out of jail, he started a job at an adult book store, his addictions growing progressively larger. He was misusing the drug Benzedrex, a sinus inhalent which nearly drove him to Schizophrenia and his drinking was ruining his health. He contracted pneumonia twice as well as a condition called post-alchohol brain syndrome. Fearing for his sanity, he joined AA, became sober and found a job as a golf caddy. At the age of 30, he wrote his first novel entitled Brown's Requiem, which was published in 1981. His other works include Clandestine, Blood on the Moon, Because the Night, Suicide Hill, Killer on the Road, and The Cold Six Thousand. His works The Black Dahlia and L. A. Confidential were adapted into feature films. Ellroy's title, Perfidia, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2014. 030i show less
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- Canonical title
- L.A. Noir
- Original title
- L.A. Noir: The Lloyd Hopkins Novels
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Lloyd Hopkins
- Important places
- Los Angeles, California, USA
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Statistics
- Members
- 481
- Popularity
- 62,824
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.66)
- Languages
- English, French, German, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 2
