Because the Night (Lloyd Hopkins Series #2)

by James Ellroy

Overview

A botched liquor store heist leaves three grisly dead. A hero cop is missing. Nobody could see a pattern in these two stray bits of information–no one except Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, a brilliant and disturbed L.A. cop with an obsessive desire to protect the innocent. To him they lead to one horrifying conclusion—a killer is on the loose and preying on his city. From the master of L.A. noir comes this beautiful and brutal tale of a cop and a criminal squared off in a life and death struggle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400095292
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/18/2005
Series:	Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins Series , #2
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.24(w) x 7.95(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

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; his most recent novel, 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.

Editorial Reviews

One of the great American writers or our time.” — Los Angeles Times“A blood poet who writes as chain saws crank, Ellroy has vigorously redefined the well-shadowed turf of contemporary crime fiction.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "An undeniably artful frenzy of violence, guilt, and unappeased self-loathing. Ellroy's crime fiction represents a high mark in the genre." —Newsday“Ellroy rips into American culture like a chainsaw in an abbatoir.” —Time "He's forged a style uniquely his own. Energetic and abrasive, it comes at us like a speed freak. . . . The power and pull of Ellroy's writing is unmistakable." —Los Angeles Times Book Review"Ellroy is the author of some of the most powerful crime novels ever written." —The New York Times “Garrotte-tight prose. . . . [Ellroy is] a force of nature, stringing together words into barbed-wire lariats which he then uses to choke the bejesus out of you. . . . His novels are all muscle, zero fat.” —Austin Chronicle "Memorable, stunning, incisive. . . . It is possible, I think, to make the argument that in the past couple of decades, Mr. Ellroy has been the most influential writer in America." —Otto Penzler, The New York Sun“Nobody in this generation matches the breadth and depth of James Ellroy’s way with noir.” —Detroit News "Ellroy sprays declarative sentences like machine-gun bullets, blasting to kingdom come all notions of justice, heroism, and simple decency." —Entertainment Weekly"[Ellroy] can make the night world of sleaze and street monsters come alive on the page." —St. Louis Globe-Democrat

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
Originally published in 1984, the second volume in James Ellroy's trilogy of novels featuring the brilliant and outspoken LAPD Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins is a noir classic. In Because the Night, Hopkins matches wits with a criminal mastermind in a bloody battle that will push the already unstable investigator "beyond the beyond."

Those who know Doctor John "The Night Tripper" Havilland see him as a self-made spiritual guru, a maverick psychologist who caters to those at the extremes of Southern California society -- from the disaffected rich to the impoverished poor. But when Hopkins, investigating a botched liquor store robbery that left three dead, runs across Havilland in his inquiries, he too gets pulled into the doctor's evil plans. A master of manipulation and mind control, Havilland quickly finds Hopkins's weakness: beautiful women in need of protection. With the help of drop-dead-gorgeous prostitute in his thrall, the deranged doctor draws Hopkins into a winner-take-all match of wits that includes missing cops, brainwashed killers -- and lots of dead people.

Set on the sleazy streets of Los Angeles and featuring a plethora of unsavory characters -- prostitutes, drug fiends, pimps, thugs, psychos, et al. -- Ellroy's three Hopkins novels (Blood on the Moon, Because the Night, and Suicide Hill) are archetypal contemporary crime fiction. Ingeniously narrated in tightly woven, brutally realistic vignettes and filled with profoundly moving (and sometimes sardonic) metaphors and symbolism. Because the Night is as much crime fiction as it is literary fiction. Intense, abrasive, and compelling, this is Ellroy at his very best. Paul Goat Allen

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