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 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. ( )

Early James Ellroy..and my favorite...also try Brown's Requiem and Clandestine. ( )