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Perfidia

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Perfidia

By: James Ellroy
Narrated by: Jeff Harding
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About this listen

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 grips 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. He’s superbly gifted but consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith – ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer.

Kay Lake is a 21-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the payroll. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart.

©2014 James Ellroy (P)2015 Isis Publishing Ltd Crime Fiction Historical Mystery Police Procedural Fiction Crime Los Angeles War Imperial Japan Suspense

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All stars
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I gave this book top billing because if your a fan of James Ellroy you should love it. If your not or haven't read any of his books then I wouldn't start with this one. For a start it is long. It has 120 chapters & is written in a a very singular style that you will either love or hate. I listened to it as well whilst reading it. Jeff Harding who does the narration does a wonderful job.

The novel is as much a work of historical fiction as it is a thriller. I always enjoy thrillers that have good sense of time & place. It is full of wonderful characters some of who are wholly fictional whilst others are based on real people who actually lived at the time. The time period is a number of days prior & post the attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The setting is Los Angeles. This is not a city of angels. It is quite the reverse. One of the central characters Dudley Smith is a truly horrible individual.He is not strictly a villain. He is instead a truly three dimensional character who is mostly villainous. It is a brutal book, at times, but Ellroy never lingers since is not his style. The violence is not in my opinion gratuitous but it is not for those of a sensitive nature.

I found it an immersive experience & was sad when it came to an end. Always a good sign.

First rate historical thriller

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Like many of Ellroys books the prose style is strange and takes a lot of time getting used to. There is little in the way of normal descriptive narrative, so the reader has to glean what he can from disjointed conversations and peculiar, almost surreal data dumps. Sometimes these are diary extracts, sometimes news broadcast and sometimes newspaper extracts. All that having been said, I really enjoyed this ( slightly overlong ) book. The setting in the anti-Jap hysteria of post Pearl Harbour Los Angeles is fascinating and the corruption of police and local officials truly horrifying. The plot is extremely convoluted and, together with the Ellroy style means that a listener really has to concentrate,. However, the reader (Jeff Harding) is amazing, using many different voices and accents. Truly brilliant, especially the women. Bottom line, I strongly recommend this book.

Weird book, excellent reader

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Perfidia is a beast of a crime fiction novel which is much more satisfying as an Audiobook, I promise! Jeff Harding does a smashing job with the narration, 1940s L.A. street slang comes alive.

A Japanese family murder in L.A. with a backdrop of Pearl Harbour is the setting that Ellroy uses to showcase historical figures, Hollywood stars and other characters from previous Ellroy series in a vast and rewarding tale.

Typical Vintage Ellroy

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I have tried to get into this book several times but cannot make head nor tail as to what is going on. Very disappointing.

puzzled

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The Black Dahlia Audiobook read by Stephen Hoye is one of my favourite books, and listening to this reminded me just how important the narrator is. Stephen Home makes that book for me. I have listened to Jeff Harding in many Lee Child 'Reacher' books... and his voice works for that. Both Lee Child and James Ellroy's style of writing can be the same succinct sharp prose, unfortunately this means that this book sounds like a Jack Reacher story and therefore I have been struggling to focus on it. My other problem is that I am actually finding all the references to Bucky, Lee, and Kay annoying. It feels like a retrospective rework of the Dahlia characters backstory without any real point, which in turns starts to devalue their original story... I don't want to give up on it, but it's feeling more and more, not for me.

Needed a better narrator...

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