Order PERFIDIA here
(also reviewed)
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Order THE BIG NOWHERE here
Order L.A CONFIDENTIAL here
Order WHITE JAZZ here
Order AMERICAN TABLOID here
Order MY DARK PLACES here
Order SHAKEDOWN here
If you had to pinpoint a moment to explain how the world became what it is today, World War II would be the only historical event you can make a case for without looking like an idiot. Everything stems from the American Way winning the Last Great Moral Battle and blossoming into a superpower. More or less, but it definitely was the key moment. The person I know that is most obsessed by the origins America's Moral Hegemony perennial favorite of mine - for the right and the wrong reasons - author James Ellroy. The Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction decided to take a swan dive at the heart of the issue with wartime novel Perfidia, which fortunately for us sinners is supposed to begin a second L.A Quartet. Oh, it's a lovely day.
Let's be real here, Perfidia is an absurdly complex, self-reflexive and often frustrating novel. It's also the most ambitious and oddly pertinent thing James Ellroy's ever written. I don't know how much 9/11 influenced the writing of Perfidia, but there's a strong parallel between Ellroy's treatment of the Japanese public scare in World War II and the current situation of Muslim people in America. Perfidia is a novel about the domestic implications of the United States' uncompromising foreign policy at the dawn of the greatest battle of their history. It's pretty different from the first L.A Quartet, at least ideologically speaking. More or less the same characters are involved but instead of tearing each other apart for a piece of the American Dream, they're all trying to profit from the same common enemy in order to further their own career.
Dudley walked toward the rose garden. Miss Davis hovered a discreet distance back. The garden was gussied up with DON'T TREAD ON ME flags. MPs flanked a table stacked with war bonds,
The Klan shits went to port arms. Parker quick-walked down to the parking lot and puked in a hedge.He heard the rifle shots and covered his ears.
He saw Jim Davis drill a Mexican, back in '33. The shots missed the cigarette and took off his nose. He bled to death on the eighth hole at Wilshire Country Club.
That said, several long-time James Ellroy readers lost their fucking mind over Perfidia and I can understand why. Ellroy gets carried away with the subversive Hollywood movement angle and his well-crafted, challenging and adorably paranoid plot disappears, sometimes for hundred of pages at the time. The cast we know, love and feel way too comfortable is all over the place. I guess Perfidia was meant to be an Ellroyesque time piece more than a cop novel, which is fine if it's what you expect at the start of the book. Even the prose is more telegraphic and less personable than it's ever been. Ellroy didn't give up on the microatrocities that made him so endearing (see quoted text above), but Perfidia is a book that is much more distant from its characters than anything written in the previous L.A Quartet.
I really liked Perfidia despite its shortcomings and it might just be because I'm a true blue James Ellroy nut. It might also be because it's a unique World War II novel and a fictional conspiracy theory on steroids. Sprinkle some of Ellroy's mean spirited prose on top and it's all I need, really. Of course, it could've been shorter and skipped on the Hollywoodian angle that only the author seems interested in. Maybe trim down the cast too. There are so many characters from the first L.A Quartet, it becomes a little gimmicky. Perfidia is much different from his previous works though and I enjoy the thought of going into a second L.A Quartet that is more than just a cash-in for the first. Not a great place to begin with James Ellroy, yet a flawed, vivid and twisted saga that will please long-time fans and crazy people like me.