Perfidia
A novel
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3.9 • 102 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans—but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins.
The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith—Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. Kay Lake is a twenty-one-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that brilliantly illuminates these four driven souls—comrades, rivals, lovers, history’s pawns.
Perfidia is a novel of astonishments. It is World War II as you have never seen it, and Los Angeles as James Ellroy has never written it before. Here, he gives us the party at the edge of the abyss and the precipice of America’s ascendance. Perfidia is that moment, spellbindingly captured. It beckons us to solve a great crime that, in its turn, explicates the crime of war itself. It is a great American novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Great book
Great novel. James Elroy is a genius. Manny years ago I saw the movie, "LA Confidential"
Staring Russel Crowe, Kim Basinger, and Kevin Spacey, which went on to win an Academy Award in 1997, and tried reading the novel, while half way through reading the book Previda caught my eye because I'm interested in history and the subject of The LAPD in the 1940's during, "the dark days after The Attack on Pearl Harbor. This novel got me addicted, Elroy gives the reader clearance to follow and observe Dr.Ashida a forensic scientist with The LAPD Crime lab, while collecting evidence at horrific crime scenes , and assisting Detectives with investigations of murders and rapes that had occurred in the "city of angles" known as Hollywood. You'll go on patrol with off the boat Irish LAPD Sgt. Dudley Smith and a real life future LAPD Police Chief, Bill Parker as they interrogate suspects during the days of "pre-Miranda warnings" by violating their rights to the 5th and 6th Amendments to obtain a conviction to protect the "decent white citizens" of LA from Japanese American fifth column or possible, but not likely fifth column along with the Mexican and African American criminal element who were unfairly targeted at the time. Elroy narrates the story using slang and racial epithets that were used at the time by the majority of "white Americans " who were a product of their time placing the reader in Los Angeles California during the early stages of Americas entry into World War II. Elroy intertwined his characters with real life persons who were well known in LA at that time, you'll meet Captain Bill Parker, Bette Davis and other real life members of The LAPD at the time along with members of "The Hollywood Elite". You'll enjoy Reading Pervida the first book of The LA Quartet
Best since American Tabloid
The same staccato delivery Ellroy fans know and love, but a bit more lyrical this time. I found myself rereading passages just to enjoy the writing. I really, really loved this book.