Perfidia by James Ellroy

Corruption, racism, murder, misogyny: Perfidia is a 700 page thrasher of a novel, delivered in Ellroy’s feverish staccato sentences and telegrammatic style. Opening the day before the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ellroy tosses us into an America that is simmering with racial tensions as it teeters on the precipice of World War II.

A Japanese family are found dead in L.A., an apparent act of hara-kiri. To Japanese-American cop Hideo Ashida, their  deaths look a lot like murder.  His search for answers is juxtaposed with his battle to keep his family out of internment camps, as tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans are rounded up without trial. His colleague, Dudley Smith, makes underhand land grabs as the wealthy are interned, whilst the callously ambitious drunkard William Parker rules the LAPD.

Perfidia is the first in a quadrilogy, prequels to the original L.A. Quartet. Ellroy brings back old characters, mixing them seamlessly with the new and adding real-life figures such as Bette Davis, Cary Grant and Joan Crawford, who he shows to be just as morally decrepit as the corrupt cops, call girls and villains of L.A.. This is not a novel for the faint-hearted – be prepared to have your moral sensitivities bulldozed.