Perfidia

Premise

The main characters are Hideo Ashida, a Japanese Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) chemist, Kay Lake, a young woman looking for adventure, the real life William H. Parker, a gifted LAPD captain with a drinking problem, and Dudley Smith, an LAPD sergeant born in Dublin, Ireland, and raised in Los Angeles. The novel is told in real time, covering 23 days with the dates and the time the chapters and events are occurring, as well as through Kay Lake's diary. An entry from Kay Lake's diary begins Perfidia, followed by a bootleg transmitter radio broadcast on Friday, December 5, 1941, being broadcast by real-life Gerald L. K. Smith. The first chapter introduces the reader to Hideo Ashida, on Saturday, December 6, 1941, at 9:08 am. Since many fictional and real-life characters appear in Perfidia, many from his prior novels, Ellroy added a dramatis personæ, which notes the previous appearances of characters in Perfidia, as well as short summaries for some of the characters. Characters appearing in previous Ellroy novels include Ward Littell, Scottie Bennett, Claire de Haven, Mike Bruening, Dick Carlisle, Dot Rothstein, Buzz Meeks, Lee Blanchard, Bucky Bleichert and Saul Lesnik.

In the book, numerous real-life characters appear or are named, such as Harry Cohn, a young John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Gerald L. K. Smith, Charles Coughlin, William H. Parker, Clemence B. Horrall, James E. Davis, Jack Webb, Gregg Toland, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Bette Davis, Bugsy Siegel, Leonard Bernstein or Bertolt Brecht.

Plot

On December 6, 1941, Agent Lee Blanchard, chemist Hideo Ashida, and detectives Buzz Meeks and Dudley Smith, all of the from the LAPD, investigate the robbery of a pharmacy. Hideo discovers scraps of cloth, identified as part of a military police armband. During that week, a military police officer had committed several rapes. After identifying him, Dudley Smith and his men shot him dead. That same night, the four members of the Watanabe family are found dead in their Highland Park home in what appears to be suicide by seppuku. However, fascist propaganda, a shortwave radio and the remains of a silencer identical to the one found in the pharmacy robbery are found in the Watanabe home. The autopsy confirmed suspicions: it was a homicide. Furthermore, Nancy, the family's daughter, had had an abortion.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lee Blanchard's girlfriend, Kay Lake, tries unsuccessfully to enlist in the armed forces. At the recruiting office she meets Scott Bennett, with whom she begins a romance. Detective Parker urges Kay to infiltrate communist circles in Los Angeles, specifically Claire De Heaven's group. Boxer Bucky Bleichert seeks to join the LAPD, but his father's pro-Nazi background makes it difficult. To gain entry, he informs the FBI about Hideo's mother's fascist sympathies. Hideo, who had a homosexual attraction to Bucky in high school, is shocked after learning this from journalist Sid Hudgens.

Hideo discovers that the weapons used in both the pharmacy robbery and the Watanabe home were silenced Lugers, purchased from a fascist club in the city. Smith, meanwhile, seeks to do business with Ace Kwan, the leader of the Hop Sing Tong, Bugsy Siegel and Harry Cohn, the real-life head of Columbia Pictures, who arranges a successful date with Bette Davis. Investigating photos of the pharmacy robbery, he identifies the robber: Huey Cressmeyer, a young pro-Nazi criminal and drug addict who used his Military Police armband to mislead the police. Furthermore, Huey, as a fascist, knew the Watanabes: he was also the one who fired the Luger inside the house, before the murder. The chief of police Horrall wants the investigation completed before the new year, concerned about the war and the FBI wiretaps into corruption (the Brenda Allen scandal) within the LAPD. Kay and Ashida help remove the bugs. Jack Webb, a civilian aide for the LAPD, tells investigators that a white man dressed in purple was present shortly before the Watanabes' murders. The same man ran over and killed a man named Larkin, a member of British Intelligence, on December 7. However, Dudley and his men are seeking a Japanese culprit, driven by political motives, regardless of the truth behind Watanabe's crime.

Reviews and reception

Perfidia was on The New York Times Best Sellers list for hardcover fiction at number 16 on September 28, 2014. It also was an Editors' Choice at The New York Times on September 12, 2014. NPR added Perfidia as one of the best books of 2014 out of approximately 250 titles. Perfidia was also one of the eighty books nominated for the 2015 Folio Prize by the Folio Prize Academy.