Perfidia

A Novel

By: James Ellroy

Narrated by: Craig Wasson

Length: 28 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
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.

©2014 James Ellroy (P)2014 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Perfidia is a brilliant, breakneck ride. Nobody except James Ellroy could pull this off. He doesn't merely write—he ignites and demolishes.” —Carl Hiaasen

“[Ellroy’s] style—jumpy, feverish, and anarchic—mirrors the world we enter. . . . The police are not knights, they’re occupiers, and in Perfidia, Ellroy comes closer than ever to making the case that he writes alt-histories not of the Los Angeles police but of the Los Angeles police state. . . . [He] depicts with frightening authenticity how those innocent of crimes are knowingly framed in the interest of the almighty ‘greater good’.” —Dennis Lehane, The New York Times Book Review

“The unmistakable product of James Ellroy’s fevered imagination. . . . Perfidia shows us the war on the home front as we have never seen it before. The result is both pure, unadulterated Ellroy and a darkly compelling deconstruction of the recent American past. . . . [It’s] written in a familiar staccato style that delivers large amounts of information in extremely compressed form. The violence, which is frequent and horrific, is described with a clinical exactitude that never flinches. And the entire enterprise is colored by an instantly recognizable tabloid sensibility. . . . Like it or not, believe in it or not, this is James Ellroy’s America, and it is a savage, often frightening place.” —Bill Sheehan, The Washington Post

Terrific, violent and fun

A strong return to the LA scene that shrugs off the politicized ennui of the Cold Six Thousand and Blood's A Rover

Wasson delivers another gem

I really love James Elroy books. Within that grouping, this is not my favorite but nonetheless very entertaining. Craig Wasson is an absolute master and he delivers a great performance here. His interpretation of Dudley Smith brings him to life. For Elroy and Wasson fans, I would recommend this book.

Classic Ellroy

Listening to Ellroy's books is so enjoyable! Great story and a great reading. Can't wait for the next one!

Stylish and engrossing, but sometimes messy and inauthentic

Sprawling, epic and utterly stylish. Ellroy is a master at time and place. This however does feel a bit sloppier and bit less cohesive and authentic than his other works.

Strong performance. Poor ending

Great reading.

Originally - throughout the first 2/3 of the book I was really impressed how Elroy could write a prequel to some of his other books light the Black Dahlia and LA Confidential and actually add to the characters' depth. But the last 1/4 of the book pretty much falls apart and we're left with a preposterous ending.

Too bad. I like Elroy's writing style, but it feels like he paints himself into a plot corner and uses dumb plot ideas to resolve.

needs a edit for all the dead wood

Once again a well established author clearly has nobody telling him that hes repeating himself over and over and over and over. It's a good book but it could have been trimmed down it would a been a great book

Monotonous

OK story but it seems very boring and long at times because of the repetitiveness. Not his best work. The performance by Wasson was great!!

Every Character Has an Angle

If you want some heavy pulp and seriously dark noir, James Ellroy is where it's at. This is only my second listen (or read) of Ellroy's work, and he lays the pulp on thick. Definitely not for someone who wants a lighter whodunit. Prior to Perfidia, I had only listened to the Black Dahlia, which has characters that tie directly into this novel, which takes place in the years prior to Dahlia. While I was glad to see some of the same characters back again, I found that the actions of at least one of them did not fit into what we had learned of their characterization in Dahlia. Since this is being set up to be another quartet of books, I'm thinking that all will fall into place.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but most definitely enjoyed the first half rather than the latter half. Every character has an angle, and I felt this bogged down parts of the story a bit, and the listen started to move a little too slowly in places. I'll definitely be checking out the next volume in the series but think I'll be reading in printed form, not listening on Audible. For my own enjoyment of the novel, I think it would be better suited for me to read on paper, rather than listen. With characters that have so many angles, I find it would be better to read and reference back.

i usually love this author's work.

this was a very complex book wher
e i not only struggled to keep up with the characters and very complex, i think, story. it was hard to stay interested.
the racism is tough. the language is rough in ways where it really doesn't propel the story.
i didn't enjoy this one very much.

At least learn to pronounce the names.

Every syllable in the name "Hideo Ashida" is a simple phoneme that's aleady available to native speakers of English, and very easy to pronounce. There's no acceptable excuse for mispronouncing both parts of the name all the way through the book, and every mispronunciation is a distraction.