Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins is the most brilliant homicide detective in the Los Angeles Police Department and one of its most troubled. In his obsessive mission to protect the innocent, there is no line he won’t cross. Estranged from his wife and daughters and on the verge of being drummed out of the department for his transgressions, Hopkins is assigned to investigate a series of bloody bank robberies. As the violence escalates and the case becomes ever more vicious, Hopkins will be forced to cross the line once again to stop a maniac on a murder binge. "His spare noir style . . . hits like a cleaver but . . . is honed like a scalpel." – Chicago Tribune "Nobody in this generation matches the breadth and depth of James Ellroy's way with noir." – The Detroit News “One of the great American writers of our time.” – Los Angeles Times "Our best living mystery writer. . . . Literate, suspenseful, honest. . . . His pages crackle with maniac energy. . . . Ellroy captures the vocabulary, the rituals, the smells and rhythms and colors of real people living on the edge. . . . Nobody since Chandler has evoked so perfectly the seamy side of LA. " – Austin Chronicle James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels--The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz--were international bestsellers. American Tabloid was Time's Novel of the Year for 1995; his memoir My Dark Places was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996; The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year for 2001. He lives on the California coast. 1The sheriff's transport bus pulled out of the gate of Malibu Fire Camp #7, its cargo sixteen inmates awaiting release, work furlough and sentence modification, its destination the L.A. County Main Jail. Fifteen of the men shouted joyous obscenities, pounded the windows and rattled their leg manacles. The sixteenth, left unencumbered by iron as a nod to his status as a "Class A" fire fighter, sat up front with the driver/deputy and stared at a photo cube containing a snapshot of a woman in punk-rock attire.The deputy shifted into second and nudged the man. "You got a hard-on for Cyndi Lauper?"Duane Rice said, "No, Officer. Do you?"The deputy smiled. "No, but then I don't carry her picture around with me."Thinking, fall back--he's just a dumb cop making conversation--Rice said, "My girlfriend. She's a singer. She was singing backup for a lounge act in Vegas when I took this picture.""What's her name?""Vandy.""Vandy? She got one name, like 'Cher'?"Rice looked at the driver, then around at the denim-clad inmates, most of whom would be back in the slam in a month or two tops. He remembered a ditty from the jive-rhyming poet who'd bunked below him: "L.A.--come on vacation, go home on probation." Knowing he could outthink, outgame and outmaneuver any cop, judge or P.O. he got hit with and that his destiny was the dead opposite of every man in the bus, he said, "No, Anne Atwater Vanderlinden. I made her shorten it. Her full name was too long. No marquee value.""She do everything you tell her to?"Rice then gave the deputy a mirror-perfected "That's right.""Just asking," the deputy said. "Chicks like that are hard to come by these days."With banter effectively shitcanned, Rice leaned back and stared out the window, taking cursory notice of Pacific Coast Highway and winter deserted beaches, but feeling the hum of the bus's engine and the distance it was racking up between his six months of digging firebreaks and breathing flames and watching mentally impoverished lowlifes get fucked up on raisinjack, and his coming two weeks of time at the New County, where his sentence reduction for bravery as an inmate fireman would get him a job as a blue trusty, with unlimited contact visits. He looked at the plastic band on his right wrist: name, eight-digit booking number, the California Penal Code abbreviation for grand theft auto and his release date-- 11/30/84. The last three numbers made him think of Vandy. In reflex, he fondled the photo cube.The bus hit East L.A. and the Main County Jail an hour later. Rice walked toward the receiving area beside the driver/deputy, who unholstered his service revolver and used it as a pointer to steer the inmates to the electric doors. Once they were inside, with the doors shut behind them, the driver handed his gun to the deputy inside the Plexiglas control booth and said, "Homeboy here is going to trusty classification. He's Cyndi Lauper's boyfriend, so no skin search; Cyndi wouldn't want us looking up his boodie. The other guys are roll-up's for work furlough and weekend release. Full processing, available modules."The control booth officer pointed at Rice and spoke into a desk-mounted microphone. "Walk, Blue. Number four, fourth tank on your right."Rice complied. Placing the photo cube in his flapped breast pocket, he walked down the corridor, working his gait in