As far as everyone in the squad room knows, Ben Halloran is completely fresh to the streets of the 77th Division - just a soft kid from the West Side who's decided to become a cop and happened to draw the hardest neighborhood in LA.

But demons from Ben's complicated past catch up with him and his tough, oddly principled Daryl Gates-era partner, Miguel Marquez, all too quickly. From the moment Ben and Marquez hit the streets together, they're pulled into a web of ultra-violent corruption and retribution. They meet hardcore Crip gangbangers and tagalong gangsta-rap gloryhounds, LA's Mexican Mafia, sleazy celebrity defense attorneys, and dirty cops with distinctly self-serving definitions of law enforcement. Ben is forced to choose among father figures and apparent destinies while trying to obey his own moral principles - as well as his desperate animal instinct to stay alive.

Author Will Beall is a Los Angeles police officer who has spent almost his entire career on the streets of South Central, much of it in antigang units. The audiobook bristles with the energy and authenticity of his experience. But the true revelation of L.A. Rex is that Will Beall can write. His brilliant, fearless prose simultaneously evokes Richard Price and James Ellroy. The result is an explosive thriller that takes us deep into a city that's further from Hollywood than we can imagine, a city that no other writer has managed to capture with this kind of hard-earned insight and intensity.