“Ask me to name the best living novelist who’s fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted, and paranoid . . . and it becomes simple: James Ellroy.”

 

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

This is the sequel to Perfidia. This is also the second volume of the second LA Quartet which includes Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. This books picks up exactly where Perfidia left off, right after Paerl Harbor. LA is rumored to be full of Japanese and Nazis and the LA PD is on the job trying to nab them, besides taking care of their own interests and projects. Ellroy is the King of Noir and if you have ever read him, you already know there will be dozens of characters, dozens of plots and dozens of twists to those plots. This book really can’t be read as a stand alone, and it’s not easy reading it as a sequel. Let’s just say the bodies will pile up at a very rapid pace so you better keep a score card.

If you have read Ellroy before than you know you are in for an old fashioned treat. There is really no one else like him, thank God. At the end of the book Ellroy lists every character and which other books they appear in. It’s over 5 pages long.
Ellroy is the master of controlled chaos. You will never be bored but you must pay strict attention or else your mind will go spinning out of control.

If your not sure about reading him, check out the film of LA Confidential. But be warned, that is a small part of the book. Recommended for Ellroy readers only because it is really not a stand alone. It to those brave Ellroy fans, enjoy.

 

Reviewed by:

Richard Franco

Added 16th October 2019

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Richard Franco