1 of 1 copy available
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.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Awards
-
Release date
September 9, 2014 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780553399288
- File size: 810043 KB
- Duration: 28:07:35
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Narrator Craig Wasson's approach to Ellroy's new historical novel reflects the testosterone one would expect of a WWII-era Los Angeles police department or a crowded, sweaty boxing match. Wasson delivers Ellroy's clipped sentences in varying tones with exacting emphasis. Accents ranging from working-class Irish to upper-class Boston roll off his tongue with ease as he deftly transitions between them. His best skill is his impression of a radio broadcaster. He fully delivers the sound of 1940s radio as the host preaches his message with all the intensity of the extremist he is. A masterful performance all around. J.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine -
November 24, 2014
Ellroy’s latest guide to the dark passages of Southern California history is a prequel to his Los Angeles Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz), featuring many of the same characters. It opens with the murder of a Japanese family on the day before the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. The story quickly spins into a tale of a city so stymied by the possibility of Far East invasion it’s all too easy for a cynical police force to make homicides, greed, and corruption the order of the day. Actor Wasson (Body Double) once again proves to be the author’s ideal vocal interpreter, not only providing more than 50 distinct voices but keeping perfect pace with Ellroy’s unique style: hammering the novel’s staccato narration, intensifying the kinetic passages, and slowing down for the characters’ fantasies and self-delusions. A Knopf hardcover. -
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.
-