Obtain Perfidia Engineered By James Ellroy Displayed In Mobi
have so few autobuy authors these days, I used to have many, but one by one I drop them when the stories turn predictable and the writing stale, One actually died, but anyway, . .
Ellroy is heavy reading, and his dirty staccato style is what makes the scenery come alive, If you've glommed the rest of his catalog you know several players here Perfidia is a prequel of sorts to his other series.
It begins just before the attack on Pearl Harbor with the murder of a Japanese family in LA, Throughout the investigation the story peels away layers to reveal corruption within the police force, sympathies for opposing forces, and a lot of bad language.
Ellroy doesn't write rainbows and unicorns,
The only problem I have with Ellroy's books is I have to go back and read the others again to jar my memory.
One day I'll sit and have a good binge,
As much as I love books, I don't explode into rainbows often when I hear of a pending release, but but but new James Ellroy.
James Ellroy you master craftsman, you devil with details,
Dennis Lehane in his review said “Ellroys prose style had transformed into a staccato bebop” and i agree,
He can give it to you in rat a tat formation with short, sharp, shock, prose, and then he gives it to you elegant, with the narrative of one female protagonist in chapters that are from her journal on all that devil in the details.
Characters at odds with each other, race troubles, pearl harbour in the backdrop, its all happening in this Los Angeles tale,
His writing of L, A comes from something deep he mentioned in Wall Street Journal “The unsolved murder of my mother inprobably led to my obsession with Los Angeles in thes.
”
He does his research, he works harder than any other writer, some may not be able to keep up with his way of teling a tale, but those can will be fully immersed in the world, the way Ellroy tells L.
A.
Two memorable and likeable characters, first and foremost the only man of Japanese nationality employed by the Los Angeles Police Department, Hideo Ashida, and secondly, a prairie girl from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Kay Lake.
This one Kay Lake was told in this narrative:
“Your job is entrapment, You are to be a stool pigeon, a snitch, a rat and a fink, If those appellations offend you, chest la guerre, You are an informant. You will collect incriminating information and report it to me, You are a wayward young woman with a traumatically checkered criminal past, I am betting that the Red Queen will find you irresistible, ”
Sample his short sharp prose here:
“Blanchard made the Churchill V sign, Meeks primped in the window reflection, Ashida walked into the drugstore,
He imprinted the floor plan, He memorised the witnesses faces, He gauged distances geometrically. He moved his eyes, details accrued, he smelled body doors imbued with adrenaline,
Two whitecoat pharmacists. A suiteandtie manager. Two oldlady customers. The fat pharmacist had a boil on his neck, The thin pharmacist had the shakes, One old lady was obese, Her vein pattern indicated arterial sclerosis, ”
“Opium.
The world was his channel, His pallet was a lifeboat, The pipe was his guide,
He flicked across lovely postcards, He welcomed fellow traveler. Bette Davis joined him. Theyre lovers in London. Theyre starphangers in the tube,
Opium.
The pallet, the pipe, Ace Kwans basement. Hes here one moment, gone the next, ” When it comes to crime fiction I cut my teeth, hell, I fractured my fucking jaw on James Ellroy's LA Quartet.
And as far as I am concerned, many imitate the man's style but this particular king is in no danger of being dethroned in this lifetime.
Every handful of years or so, when a new backbreaker by Ellroy struts onto the bookstore shelf, I'm one of the first suckers clawing my way through the pages.
I'll go on the record and say that, since Ellroy wrote The Black Dahlia and began his long task of rewriting the last half ofth century American history as a sleazy pulp novel, he has redefined what a crime novel is capable of.
Ellroy's L. A. is a world where cops are criminals, politicians are criminals, where everyone is a criminal, and occasionally some of these criminals aren't as terrible of monsters as the rest.
Neither optimism nor nostalgia are notions Ellroy tries to sell his readers,
Sadly, Perfidia, which is supposed to launch a prequel quartet of novels that will tie together all the strings of his LA Quartet and his Underworld U.
S. A trilogy into one cohesive work, crumbles under its own ambition, and Ellroy's Ellroyness as a writer is completely to blame, I don't really have the heart to take the scalpel to this book and besides, fellow Ellroy devotee Kemper did a wonderful job at pointing out all the cracks in the Ellroy façade in sitelinkhis own review, and in a much more thoughtful and creative way than I can imagine.
His beefs are my beefs with the writing, the plotting and the historical context,
I will briefly add that several of the characters who serve as this novel's protagonists have played large roles in previous, chronologically later installments, and much of the information that is revealed about them, as well as their actions during these wild days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, don't match up with what has already been written, which goes against Ellroy's whole mission statement of making this series of tentatively eleven books gel together as one, longaslife ubernovel.
Also, knowing the fate of every character in the book removes a lot of the tension of wondering who the hell is going to manage to walk away from this book alive For those not in the know, Ellroy is most likely the originator of the literary trope of having one character empty an entire clip of a gun, point blank, into the head of another character.
But why three Because it is still an Ellroy, It's a big, bold, incredibly violent, wild, densely plotted, rude, nightmarish, sexy, morally reprehensible novel written in a completely idiosyncratic beebop staccato of simple sentences.
New readers may find a lot to love in this book, Me I'm just hoping he works out some of these kinks by next book, Los domingos acudía al único cine de la ciudad, Se trataba de un antiguo teatro reconvertido, una pequeña sala donde se proyectaba una película distinta cada fin de semana, Aquel día salí a la calle obviando el frío y recorrí el corto trayecto hasta mi casa reflexionando complacido sobre la película que acababa de ver.
L. A. Confidential fue uno de los grandes éxitos de ese año, una resurrección casi inesperada de un cine negro que parecía desaparecido.
Curtis Hanson adaptó con gran acierto una novela de un tal James Ellroy, un escritor de los Ángeles, cronista insolente de su ciudad natal.
Era la primera vez que escuchaba hablar sobre él, Pocos días después estrenaba la novela en la soledad de mi habitación, Y el impacto fue brutal por inesperado, Porque nunca había leído algo con ese estilo, Parco, duro, pragmático. Telegráfico. Una evolución desmesurada del gran Hammet, Parecía prescindir de palabras que mi cabeza añadía por costumbre, Frases cortas, cortísimas. No había lugar para acicalamientos innecesarios, El impacto siempre es el mismo cuando comienzo una nueva novela de Ellroy, No importan los años transcurridos ni las novelas leídas, Hay algo que no me cuadra, que me pierde, pero que me atrae, Y de nuevo me encuentro en ese terreno desconocido aún habiéndolo recorrido tantas veces, como si caminara por un desierto donde el viento cambiara el paisaje cada noche.
Dunas nuevas. Dunas desaparecidas.
Perfidia es el comienzo del segundo cuarteto de Los Ángeles, aunque cronológicamente es anterior, una novela larga que nos lleva de nuevo a esos Ángeles de los años cuarenta donde parece que todo está por hacer.
Estados Unidos se encuentra al borde de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, La última esperanza de paz salta por los aires cuando los escuadrones japoneses bombardean Pearl Harbor, Hasta ese momento, Los Ángeles ha sido un refugio inestable para los ciudadanos americanos de origen japonés, pero ahora la locura de la guerra y una creciente escalada de rencor se apoderan de la ciudad.
En este ambiente de miedo y sospecha, el hallazgo de los cuerpos sin vida de una familia nipona de clase media pondrá sobre el tablero a una multitud de personajes: el astuto y ambicioso capitán del departamento de policía William H.
Parker, el brillante químico forense japonés Hideo Ashida, una jovencísima y atrevida Kay Lake, el ex boxeador Lee Blanchard, el policía Bucky Bleichart y el detective de homicidios irlandés Dudley Smith, todos ellos viejos conocidos de las novelas anteriores de Ellroy.
Los ingredientes son los mismos porque Ellroy conoce muy bien la receta: corrupción, racismo, glamur, bajos fondos, tipos duros y tipos no tan duros.
Un viaje a una ciudad en construcción, a un mundo en construcción,
James Ellroy es quizás el último superviviente de un estilo único, una forma de narrar que se nutre de los clásicos para transformar sus historias en una espiral anfetamínica donde, una vez metabolizada su prosa, no hay forma de salir, solo dejarte llevar.
I'm not a big a lover of crime fiction now as I was back when I read Ellroy's brilliant L, A. Quartet, which is surely one of the greatest feats in crime writing ever, but decided to read because it takes place during World War Two.
But did we need a second Quartet I'm kind of split on that after reading this, As a stand alone novel it ticked a lot of the boxes I was hoping for, however, I can't see myself reading the other books that follow this as it just never felt like the Ellroy from before.
The language wasn't as hardboiled for one, and it dragged on for way too long, with somewhat of a fizzled out ending when I was expecting something more spectacular.
A world of cops amp criminals, and criminals that are cops, and in Dudley Smith we have one of the great characters of crime fiction, and he's here again in the years prequeling the first L.
A. Quartet, doing good, and bad things, all in the name of justice, and sometimes not, Full of charm when need be, but ruthless, cold and deadly when it really matters, There is so much going on aside from the murder investigation of a Japanese family on the dawn of the pearl harbour attacks, with the relationship between the young dreamer Kay Lake who has her fingers in many pies in regards to other characters, including heavy drinking police captain William H.
Parker and LAPD Central Patrol officer, exheavyweight boxer, and Dudley Smith henchman, Lee Blanchard, Very much has that classic noir feel of some of the great crime dramas of Hollywood's golden age, and along with the prostitute rackets, commie activity, dodgy land developers, fifthcolumn fascism, dope running, people smuggling, and more, there is enough plot here to sink a battleship.
The novel is also, as I thought it would be, as hard as nails and brutal at times, as Ellroy paints his sprawling, vidid and kaleidoscopics L.
A full of corruption, WWracial tention, escalating violence, and the most snitching and blackmail I think I'll ever come across in a novel.
Not his best, but he is still a class above most other crime writers,./I would think that since James Ellroy is one of my favorite living novelists that Id check every now and then to see if a new book is in the works.
Nope. I think I treat all my favorites as Pynchons, new books may come out at some point but they will be rare like unicorns so its not worth poking around to see if you can find one and this would be a sad way to find unicorns because youre guaranteed to probably never find on if you never look.
But my lack of awareness paid off nicely when after months of putting off looking through any of the Book Expo of America BEA materials I finally succumbed on the night before it started and saw, James Ellory is signing atpm at Random House.
One might think that at this point Id fire up the magic machine that gives information about all kinds of things and look up James Ellory and New Book, or maybe even go to the little search function at the top of this page and type in James Ellroy and see what his new book was.
Nope. Didnt do that either, which wouldnt have been difficult since I was on this magical information giving machine at the time,
Instead I typed Random House Friday,pm David Mitchell,pm James Ellroy and added to a magical program on the machine that would allow me to see what I typed on the first magical machine on an equally magical pocket sized version of the machine.
What wondrous times we live in,
My lack of initiative to find out what exactly I was going to be getting signed by James Ellroy didnt stop me from bothering Karen with questions about what the book could be.
Do you think its a long book Do you think it is one of those very nice looking reissues with a Chip Kidd cover but which are ultimately kind of unsatisfying Do you think its a continuation of the American Trilogy Of course Karen didnt know, and maybe some of these questions I kept to myself but I did wonder about them and again I did nothing to satisfy my curiosity.
This all lead to a nice surprise, First that Id get to have anything signed by James Ellory, who I hadnt even thought might be at BEA and second because it was a major novel.
I didnt realize this though until a few seconds before he signed a copy of the book and handed it to me though.
Even when I finally broke down and looked up to see what Id be standing in line to get I still only gave a cursory glance at the description and felt a little disappointed, Japanese Americans, World War, Los Angeles.
I wanted some American History to keep on rolling from where his last novel left off, Give the dirt and collusion on Reagans America, slander the Clintons,
You dont always get what you want,
Still reading
After a fairly unsatisfying moment of getting to meet James Ellroy, I leafed through the new tome in my hands and thought, wow, this is going to be awesome.
I saw the book ended with a list of characters and where else they appear in the seven novels that make up the LA and Underworld series of novels.
Saw that this was the first of a quartet that would be part of the same world but come before the start of The Black Dahlia.
Saw lots of familiar names, Hello, old morally dubious friends!
And of course this was the first thing I read as soon as I got home from BEA ok this is a lie, I finished the new Hardcase Lawrence Block that I got about two hours before Perfidia, but I had started it while waiting on the Random House lines, so while technically a BEA book it shouldnt count.
There were so many books that Id picked up in the few days there that I was excited to read, but none of them had any chance of being read before thispage novel which Ellroy says is his longest page count novel,
I feel like his last couple were longer, but it might have just been the scope and writing style that packed so much more into the pages than this one did.
Preambling enough I should talk about the book, The title comes from a song, specifically the Glenn Miller version of it, You can listen to it while reading the rest of this review, or just imagine that youre part of Dudley Smiths opium induced imagination: sitelink youtube. com/watchvESkao
It starts on Decemberth,, A Saturday morning with a stake out of a pharmacy that had been held up multiple times in the past month, LAPDs only Japanese cop has created a device to take pictures automatically of every license plate that parks in front of the pharmacy.
He and Ray Pinker sit and watch to see if the device works and it isnt long before the store is held up.
This is how Ellroy decided to start his saga that would result in all the bad shit that goes down through the seven other books.
A simple armed robbery.
Later in the day a Japanese family is found dead in their house, Mom, dad, their panty sniffing pervy son, and young daughter, Seppuku. A note about the coming apocalypse, Decemberth. The next morning, obviously, is Pearl Harbor,
The story is told from four perspectives, with each chapter switching from one to the other this can get a little confusing it spots because after the first go around you arent told whose perspective you are seeing, you just have to remember that it goes Hideo Ashida, Kay Lake, William Parker, Dudley Smith.
This isnt usually difficult but there are a couple of spots when the characters start colluding where it took me a bit to figure out where we were
Ashida is the only Japanese cop on the LAPD mentioned above.
Kay Lake is a young dilettante with dubious morals, William Parker is a reallife LAPD cop and would be the chief of police in thes ands, And finally Dudley Smith, the menacing villain through much of the original LA Quartet,
This novel follows the last weeks ofas World Waris beginning for the United States, JapaneseAmericans in Los Angeles are being rounded up and internment camps are looming as the new mustbe places to live of February,,
As civilrights are being trampled, the case of the Japanese family is turned into a public relations tool, Corruption is everywhere and all four of the main characters are colluding for various advantages of life during wartime,
Its fairly standard Ellroy stuff, A few really tough guys holding each other by the balls while pointing a throw down piece at the other ones head and some people who have to collude with these tough guys if they are going to survive.
But its in these conspiracies within conspiracies that Ellroy excels, and the scale might be smaller than in American Tabloid where a president ultimately gets killed by these schemes but they are still just as engaging to read.
The stand out in this novel was Dudley Smith, Its been years since I read the LA Quartet, so some of my memories are hazy, but what I remember in those was Dudley Smith as a looming menace.
An untouchable, corrupt and brutal cop who let nothing get in his way, Here we see the rise of Dudley Smith, hes already the exemplar of the brutal Irish cop, but there is also the humane side of him exposed.
He comes across more like Pete Bondurant would become as his story unfolded in The Cold Six Thousand, Im probably going to remember this book as the Ballad of Dudley Smithspoiler for those who have read Black Dahlia.
Was this book five Maybe not, It probably isnt as good as LA Confidential or the first two books of the Underworld trilogy, But still it was quite good, The writing wasnt as bare bones as what Ellroy was achieving in his last three major novels, It was more a return to the style he wrote in during the beginning of the LA Quartet, Its still fairly to the point without much excess baggage, but it doesnt run like a maniac hopped up on bennies, At one point towards the end of the novel Ellroy writes about seven and a half pages in normal prose and even though it should have been the part of the story that brought a lot of the threads together it was a slog to get through.
Ellroys a great writer when he is writing in his style but when he left that style it was all kinds of clunky, or maybe it was just jarring afterpages of tightness.
For Ellroy fans this is going to be a mustread, Its a bazillion times better as a prequel than anything George Lucas ever came up with, For Ellroy neophytes Id recommend starting at the beginning of either other series, A lot of what is great about this book is seeing many of these characters in their relatively more innocent states,
The one thing I was thinking about right after I finished this book is how good of an HBO series these books would make.
Im thinking a True Detective style for shifting through eras with the same characters meets Game of Thrones and The Wire.
Ill be looking forward to seeing the a season wrap up with a musical montage of Unchained Melody and the trigger about to be pulled on JFK.
.