In a parking lot behind a landmark grille on Hollywood Boulevard, Detective Matt Jones's first night working homicide plunges him into a nightmare.

A man has been brutally gunned down in his own car; his bullet-riddled body thought to be the work of a serial robber haunting the Strip for months.

But as Jones digs deeper, he uncovers a chilling link to a ritualized murder from the past and finds himself swept into a labyrinth of corruption and deceit that leads directly back to the LAPD, the city’s elite, and a serial killer of unprecedented savagery.

With each new clue Jones unearths, the web of mystery tightens, drawing him closer to a truth so dark he begins to question everything he thought he knew about justice. And as the body count rises, he knows that time is running out.

In a world where every ally could be a foe and every step could be his last, it’s not just about finding the killer anymore. For Matt Jones, a rookie detective working his first murder case, it’s about facing the darkness within and surviving the match.

“Stunning emotional force. Ellis keeps everything in focus while building a staggering momentum.”
—Booklist Starred Review

C I T Y   O F   E C H O E S

"Know what a Chelsea Grin is? Readers who stay with Ellis’s powerhouse of a novel are going to find out, and their response to this incredible bit of cruelty is sure to be mixed. Most will side with Matt Jones, Ellis’s hard-bitten L.A. homicide detective, who thought he’d seen everything. Even he is “unable to comprehend how anyone, no matter what their psychological issues…could do this to any living thing.” Jones is a bystander to the crime that ignites the plot: a teacher’s affair with his student that ends horribly. Why do the arresting officers start dying? Why do murders continue after the presumed killer is caught? Characters multiply and the plot grows ever more complex, but Ellis keeps everything in focus while building a staggering forward momentum. Then a tsunami of revelations and reversals begins, each put forth with stunning emotional force as everything Jones—and the reader—knew for sure is turned on its head. Awesome, as the kids say, but not necessarily right for late-night reading. Not with those Chelsea Grins."

From Booklist, Starred Review (Complete)