Perfidia

June 23, 2014
Ellroy launches his second L.A. Quartet with a sprawling, uncompromising epic of crime and depravity, with admirable characters few and far between. The action spans about three weeks during December 1941, opening the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with the deaths of four members of the Watanabe family, who were possibly victims of a ritual murder-suicide. A note left at the scene written in Japanese, disclaiming responsibility for a “looming apocalypse,” suggests foreknowledge of the attack. The investigation and its ramifications are explored from the perspectives of the LAPD’s Japanese crime-scene specialist Hideo Ashida; William Parker, the future LAPD head; and two figures familiar from Ellroy’s earlier books—Dudley Smith, a murderous and bent cop, and the enigmatic Kay Lake, who’s roped into going undercover in L.A.’s communist community. Cynical schemes to profit from the planned internment of the Japanese may have played a part in the killings as well. This is as good a sample of Ellroy as any for newcomers, and old hands will find new perspectives on old characters intriguing. Author tour. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates.

Starred review from July 15, 2014
Though it pivots on the Pearl Harborattack, this worm's-eye view from thoroughly corrupt Los Angeles is a war novellike no other.It's complicated, and the author (TheHilliker Curse, 2010, etc.) wouldn't have it any other way. There's notelling the good guys from the bad in Ellroy's Los Angeles, because there areno good guys. The major distinction between cops and criminals is that theformer have the power to frame the latter and kill the innocent with impunity, which they (or at least some) do without conscience or moral compunction, oftenin complicity with the government and even the Catholic Church. With hisoutrageously oversized ambition, Ellroy has announced that this sprawling butcompelling novel is the beginning of a Second L.A. Quartet, which will coverthe city during World War II and serve as a prequel to his L.A. Quartet, hismost powerful and popular fiction, which spans the postwar decade. Thus, itincludes plenty of characters who appear in other Ellroy novels, sowing theseeds of their conflicts and corruption. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the fourcorpses of a Japanese family are discovered in what appears to be a gruesomeritual suicide. It seems they had advance knowledge of the attack (which, bythe end of the novel, appears to have been the worst-kept secret in history).The investigation, or coverup, pits Sgt. Dudley Smith, full of charm but devoidof scruples ("I am in no way constrained by the law," he boasts), against Capt.William Parker, who's plagued by demons of alcoholism, faith and ambition (andwho is one of the real-life characters fictionalized in a novel where BetteDavis plays a particularly sleazy role). Caught between the rivalry of the twoare a young police chemist of Japanese descent and a former leftist callgirl-turned-informant. The plot follows a tick-tock progression over the courseof three weeks, in which "dark desires sizzle" and explode with a furiousclimax.Ellroy is not only back in form-he'sraised the stakes.

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Starred review from August 1, 2014
I condemn these actions, even as I attempt to exploit them. No, that's not James Ellroy speaking, but one of his most memorable creations: LAPD sergeant Dudley Smith, whose charming wink and lilting brogue belie the fact that he is a sociopathic opportunist as likely to slap you on the back as he is to shoot you in the face. It's usually unfair to try to guess what novelists mean, but with Ellroy, the temptation can be irresistible. He has spent his career writing about men for whom brutal violence and casual racism are a way of lifeand, while a writer's refusal to telegraph his opinions may be the highest form of art, when does the balance shift between indictment and exploitation? Why document the unspeakable behavior of bad men in law enforcement and government in book after book after book? Without knowing the author's mind, those may be unanswerable questions. Ellroy has always thrived on our uncomfortable fascination with the lawless lawmen who shaped the second half of the twentieth century. The good news is that, however unsettling, this book can still be admired without knowing the answers. Opening on the eve of Pearl Harbor, and cast with many of the characters of Ellroy's legendary L.A. Quartet, Perfidia, the first volume of what is being billed as the Second L.A. Quartet, marks both a return to the scene of Ellroy's greatest success and a triumphant return to form. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese family is found dead in their home, apparent victims of ritual suicide. Inconsistencies suggest that it might be murderbut, as the city reels from next morning's act of war, there is pressure to fit the facts to the crime. Police chief Clemence Call-Me-Jack Horrall demands a solution by New Year's, and Dud Smith is only too happy to oblige. Others demur, but with L.A. caught in a sudden squall of wartime hysteria, their objections are blown away in the storm. As ordinary citizens act out against the Japs and police round up suspects, plans are being made to intern the Japanese, seize their property, and turn a nice profit in the bargain. Meanwhile, clandestine short-wave radios and a submarine attack raise the fear that a Fifth Column is collaborating with the enemy, rendering the entire California coast vulnerablebut is the Fifth Column real or imagined? Longtime Ellroy readers will be gratified to see practically the full cast of the L.A. Quartet and some characters from the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy, from Bucky Bleichert and William Parker to Ward Littell and J. Edgar Hoover (with a notable cameo by Elizabeth Short), but the most fascinating creation is a newcomer, Hideo Ashida, a gifted forensics man whose job is complicated by his Japanese nationality, his homosexuality, and his inability to choose between would-be patrons Smith and Parker. Smith, Parker, Ashida, and Kay Lake, a bohemian recruited to infiltrate a cell of well-meaning Communist sympathizers, form the key quartet in a typically labyrinthine, byzantine, cast-of-dozens (even Bette Davis plays a part!) effort. Evidence is suppressed, confessions are coerced, plots are hatched, allegiances are broken, and the case is solvedafter a fashion. As the novel builds to its fever-dream climax, Ellroy's wartime L.A. evokes William S. Burroughs at his surreal and satirical best. It's a landscape where insomniac obsessives fight and fornicate fueled by drugs and alcohol, rifle squads roam the streets wearing shrunken-head lucky charms, and policemen pose their kids for pictures with a murder suspect called the Wolfman. Ashida summarizes it succinctly: Land grabs, plastic surgery, blood libel. Rogue cops, sub attacks, a lynch-mob massacre. . . . Secret radios and...

April 1, 2014

Ellroy is back with the first book in a second "L.A. Quartet" and the same darkly stylish crime writing that made him famous. With the internments that commenced after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese American family is found dead in Los Angeles. Was it murder or ritual suicide? That question ends up involving a top-notch Japanese American forensic chemist, a risk-taking young woman, real-life police officer William "Whiskey Bill" Parker, and corrupt police office Dudley Smith of L.A. Confidential fame. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

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