Perfidia

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'There has never been a writer like James Ellroy.' Telegraph

Los Angeles, December 6, 1941. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. War fever and race hate grip the city and the internment of Japanese-Americans begins.

Following the hellish murder of a Japanese family, three men and one woman are summoned. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police. He's superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith - Irish emigre, ex-IRA killer and fledgling war profiteer. Kay Lake is a 21-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. Hideo Ashida is a brilliant police chemist and the only Japanese on the payroll.

Four driven souls - rivals, lovers, history's pawns - thrown into an investigation which will not only rip them apart but take America to the edge of the abyss at a crucial moment in its history.

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CHAPTER 14 KAY LAKE'S DIARY Los Angeles, December 7, 1941 Sunday brunch with Elmer and Brenda. Decorous, save for the talk. Brenda owns a lovely home in Laurel Canyon. The furnishings can be seen in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Harry Cohn enjoys Brenda's girls and gave her free run of the Columbia warehouse. A Mexican maid laid out huevos rancheros. Elmer mixed gin fizzes. Gary Cooper fucked Barbara Stanwyck on the couch I was perched on. Brenda swore that the rumor was true. I felt disembodied. It was lack of sleep more than shock over what I'd heard at City Hall. Lee Blanchard, Ben Siegel and Abe Reles. Captain William H. Parker's belief that I would now be ripe for entrapment. He held me to be a woman who would stand up for her man and do anything to cover his misdeeds. He was gravely mistaken there. Elmer said, "Lee caught a squawk with the Dudster. It's all over the air. Four Japs in Highland Park." Brenda dosed her eggs with hot sauce. "You go straight to shop- talk." Elmer said, "A good host plays to his guests, honey. Shoptalk is the only sort of talk that Miss Katherine Lake enjoys." I laughed and picked at my food. Brenda and Elmer were nearly ten years older than I. They were professionals; I was a cop's quasi- girlfriend. The disparity rankled. We all went back to Bobby De Witt and the Boulevard-Citizens job. Open secrets and unspoken truths began germinating there. I wanted to peddle myself to wash the stink of Bobby off of me; Brenda refused to let me do it. She said, "You live by these crazy-girl notions you get from books and movies. I wouldn't be much of a friend if I let you take that nonsense too far." Elmer handed me a cocktail. I wondered how up-to-date he was on Lee and Ben Siegel. "Bugsy" is now ensconced in a "penthouse" suite at the Hall of Justice jail. Sheriff's deputies serve as valets, flunkies and chauffeurs for visiting starlets. Velvet curtains provide privacy for Ben and his overnight guests. His release is imminent. Abe Reles' "swan dive" scotched the prosecution's case against him. Elmer smiled and waggled his cigar stub. We possess an odd telepathy and often seem to know what the other is thinking. It always pertains to "shoptalk." He said, "Lee paid off his chit with Benny Siegel." I said, "Yes, I figured it out." Brenda crushed her cigarette on a bread plate. "Tell all, honey. Don't be a C.T." I said, "No, your lover goes first." Elmer sprawled in a chair and grabbed Brenda. She fell into his lap and went Whoops! He said, "Thad Brown drove Dudley Smith and Lee to Union Station. He read the papers a few days later and put it together." Brenda said, "How'd you figure it out?" I made that zip-the-lips gesture. Elmer said, "Give, sister." Brenda said, "Don't be a C.T." I played coy. "There's a Traffic captain who knows a lot about Lee." Elmer draped an arm around Brenda. "How do you know that?" "Because Captain William H. Parker is courting me." Brenda hooted. "Honey, that sanctimonious son of a bitch does not court women in any kind of classic sense." I lit a cigarette. "You mean he doesn't take bribes, beat confessions out of suspects, or screw your girls in the back of Mike Lyman's Grill, where I'm meeting him at 1:00." Brenda looked aghast. Elmer looked flabbergasted. He said, "Kay, how do you know that Whiskey Bill Parker knows a lot about Lee?" I blew an imperiously high smoke ring. "Because Parker is courting and coercing me. Because he has me transcribing wire recordings at City Hall before he tells me his play. Because you, Brenda and Lee had a very injudicious conversation on August 14 of '39. You discussed your 'service,' the Boulevard-Citizens robbery and Lee's debt to Ben Siegel. Elmer, you actually said, 'If you owe Ben, he makes you kill somebody for him.' " Elmer bolted his drink. Brenda waved mock wolfsbane. I said, "Do you think that William H. Parker is incapable of extrapolating and reaching the conclusion that Lee and Dud- ley Smith killed Abe Reles? Do you think that William H. Parker doesn't know that half of the Detective Bureau phones are tapped? Do you honestly think that you're as smart as William H. Parker?" Brenda fished a pack of cigarettes from Elmer's coat pocket. "I can't believe it. You honest to God like that son of a bitch." I felt myself blush. Elmer said, "No more calls from City Hall." Brenda lit a cigarette and blew her own high ring. "Gossip always comes in droves, Citizens. One of our girls picked up a tip from a G-man she tricked with. Some fellow named Ward Littell." Elmer said, "Give, sister. Who's the C.T. now?" Brenda said, "The Feds are going after the Department, strictly on the phone taps. Art Hohmann snitched the listening posts and the whole kaboodle." I said, "I destroyed that recording I described to you." Brenda said, "There's oodles more, Citizen. Can you recall what you said on any given phone call from two years ago? Uh-uh, you can't." Elmer cracked his knuckles. "I'll tell Jack Horrall. He'll pull the wires with the good dirt, and leave the Feds the pablum." I heard radio buzz next door. An announcer was almost shouting. The noise was high-decibeled and insistent. Brenda climbed off Elmer's lap and smoothed out her dress. She said, "Sweetie, please set Sister Lake straight on Whiskey Bill." Elmer leaned toward me. "Don't hold no goodwill for that Pope- loving bastard," he said. "He's as ruthless as Dudley Smith, he was bone-dirty with Jim Davis, he'll get the Chief's job come hell or high water and take the Department down out of spite if it don't fall his way. He uses people and tosses them away like fucking Kleenex. He's a hatchet man, an extortionist and a fucking prig who gets shit- faced drunk, talks to God and moves his lips while he does it. He ran the 'Bum Blockade' for Two-Gun, he shackled Okies in the back of freight cars and sent them off to the lettuce fields up in Kern County, where the goddamn farm bosses paid Davis a buck a man a day. He ran bag to the Mexican Staties back when Carlos Madrano and Davis were supplying wetbacks to every Jap farm between here and Oxnard. You run, sister. Whatever that man has planned for you ain't nothing you'd ever want for yourself." Brenda said, "Amen." That radio blasted. I didn't want to address Elmer's pitch. I walked to the window and glanced out. A man next door saw me. Our windows were wide open. His radio was earsplitting. He reached over and turned it off. He said, "The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor." Excerpted from Perfidia by James Ellroy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

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. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* 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 life and, 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 murder but, 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 vulnerable but 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 solved after 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 feigned seppuku. The haughty Left and the bellicose Right. A grand alliance of war profiteers. All he leaves out, perhaps, are the smut films, sexual perverts, and Nazi sympathizers. In interviews, Ellroy can come across as a conservative curmudgeon, an image it's easy to believe after reading his prose. So it's surprising that the word that comes to mind for this book is balance. His character portrayals have never been more nuanced or dare we say it sympathetic. His prose veers away from the bombast it's sometimes been prey to, and, while still bearing his hallmarks (The kitchen went gas-stove hot), it's less brutally abrupt. The master of telegrammatic typing even turns a phrase or two, and quite nicely. A nascent interest in forensic science C.S.I. L.A. '41? adds interest to what is, above all, a magnificently plotted mystery.Regardless of what Ellroy intends or means, what he's achieved is a disturbing, unforgettable, and inflammatory vision of how the men in charge respond to the threat of war. It's an ugly picture, but just try looking away.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2014 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

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 formhe'sraised the stakes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.