(pb; 1986: third book in the Lloyd Hopkins/L.A. Noir trilogy)
From the back cover
“Detective Lloyd Hopkins is
the most brilliant homicide detective in the Los Angeles Police Department and
one 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 on the verge
of being drummed out of the department for his transgressions, Hopkins is
assigned to investigate a series a 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.”
Review
This edited review was originally published on this site on October 13, 2006. That review has since been deleted.
Suicide, likes its prequels Blood on the Moon and Because the Night, sports a nasty, tautly penned edge, but this time out, its character-based darkness is offset with an unexpected grace and sense of mercy, with an interweaving, often complex, plot focused and sharp book, with an underlying raw tone.
Lloyd Hopkins embodies this progression. While he’s still not exactly sensitive to others, he’s relatively more restrained, and—with exciting results—sometimes finds his roles switched with other characters (e.g., Capt. Fred Gaffaney, one of Hopkins’s chief foes), putting me in the transcendent mindset of the closing moments of another lots-of-edge work, Abel Ferrara’s 1992 crime drama-thriller Bad Lieutenant. Great capper to the Hopkins trilogy, this, worth owning.
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