About this item
NATIONAL BESTSELLER AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEARIt is December 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-Americansmdashbut 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 Hersquos superbly gifted corrosively ambitious liquored-up and consumed by dubious ideology He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley SmithmdashIrish eacutemigreacute ex-IRA killer fledgling war profiteer Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the LA 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 soulsmdashcomrades rivals lovers historyrsquos 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 Americarsquos 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 novelFrom the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed L.A. Qurtet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover. He is the author of one work of non-fiction, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.
