Publisher's Weekly says Suicide Hill is a book that "hurtles along with almost equal gore and slapstick ... L.A.'s sleazy sides are brilliantly drawn ... Ellroy can't write a dull line".
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.