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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. 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. Kay Lake is a 21-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm centre 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.PERFIDIA is a grand drama set in Los Angeles during the first month of Americas entry into the war, and is the first volume in Ellroys Second L.A. Quartet. Transpiring within only 24 days December 6, 1941 through to New Years Eve it is a crime novel, a war novel and a historic romance, taking place in real time and starring characters both real and fictional.
About the author
James Ellroy, geb. 1948 in Los Angeles, wurde mit dem Roman 'Die schwarze Dahlie' international bekannt. Ellroy hat über ein Dutzend Kriminalromane veröffentlicht und genießt weltweit Kultstatus. Er bekam den Edgar Award - The Grand Master 2015 verliehen.
Summary
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. It is World War II as you have never seen it, and Los Angeles as James Ellroy has never written it before.
Foreword
A new novel from Ellroy is always a publishing event. That Perfidia is the first volume of his 'Second L.A. Quartet' makes this publication even more exciting.
Report
There has never been a writer like James Ellroy. Telegraph
