Perfidia

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. This is World War Two as you have never seen it. This is America as only Ellroy can write it. 'There has never been a writer like James Ellroy.' Telegraph Los Angeles, December 6, 1941. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. War fever and race hate grip the city and the internment of Japanese-Americans begins. Following the hellish murder of a Japanese family, three men and one woman are summoned. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police. He's superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith - Irish emigre, ex-IRA killer and fledgling war profiteer. Kay Lake is a 21-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. Hideo Ashida is a brilliant police chemist and the only Japanese on the payroll. Four driven souls - rivals, lovers, history's pawns - thrown into an investigation which will not only rip them apart but take America to the edge of the abyss at a crucial moment in its history.

About the Author :
JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the 'Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy' - American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover - and the 'L.A. Quartet' novels, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz. He lives in Los Angeles.

Review :
There has never been a writer like James Ellroy. An epic and bizarrely transcendental novel that represents an extraordinary achievement by any measure … a genuinely impressive feat of sustained literary energy: 90% of novelists couldn't get anywhere near it…His is an awe-inspiring artistic vision and this is a novel that should surely be read by new readers as well as fans. The master of American crime fiction. A triumphant return to the violent fictional world where he started – 1940s Los Angeles … Fans will not be disappointed ... It is populated by many of Ellroy’s most memorable monsters, notably LAPD Sgt Dudley Smith … Reading it made me want to return to the original Quartet. James Ellroy is back doing what he does best, weaving a tangle of tales set in wartime Los Angeles…I look forward, eagerly, to the next three instalments. There surely can’t be a more richly or brutally realised city in world literature than James Ellroy’s Los Angeles ... The shock and awe of Ellroy’s propulsive vision remains visceral, and reading him is about as physical as reading can get without being hit over the head by a book. The question any aficionado will ask is does it compare with prime Ellroy. The short answer is yes … Perfidia’s greatest achievement might be the style in which it renders history – subjective, fictionalised history, but history nonetheless – in lurid 3D colour. They should teach this stuff in school. Ellroy’s customary command of language is overwhelming…Ellroy is still trying to expand the parameters of the crime novel…Exhilarating prose. An impressively detailed reconstruction of Los Angeles in wartime … Perfidia’s high-octane hard-boiled energy draws the reader in. A sprawling, beguiling and hugely entertaining tale … a typically sprawling, chaotic, pulsating tale of crime and punishment on a huge canvas, every page thrumming to the furious tension between his ambition and his delivery.