Perfidia (Ellroy) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
In Dudley Smith, Ellroy has found the hellhound guide for his neon-noir Los Angeles underbelly…Smith casts the same shadow over Perfidia that Judge Holden cast over Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. He's writ large and writ evil, a monolith of corruption and utilitarian expediency. But unlike what Ellroy did with Smith's previous appearances, here he sets his sights, to varying degrees of success, on the devil's heart and the ways in which satanic charms often coexist with paternal benevolence. For Smith engenders loyalty as much as he does fear. In a world as sordid and chaotic as the one Ellroy depicts, the simple purity of Smith's evil attains a kind of nobility.
Denis Lehane - New york Times Book Review


Compelling.... A triumphant return to the violent fictional world where he started—1940s Los Angeles.
Andrew Neather - Evening Standard (UK)
 

Perfidia brings the two sides of his work together: the period crime-writing of LA Quartet, with its highlighting of police misdemeanours, and the wider politico-historical concerns of his subsequent Underworld USA trilogy.
Guardian (UK)


There has never been a writer like James Ellroy. Since the Eighties, in novels such as L.A. Confidential and The Cold Six Thousand, he has been making real a secret world behind the official history of America, where bad girls mingle with very bad men, and the designs of murderers, cops, mobsters, movie stars and politicians can be equally callous, equally deadly. He melds racial invective, street slang, hepcat jazz talk, junkie jive and scandal-rag rants into prose of controlled intensity, and to enter it is to experience a vivid eyeball rush of recognition.
Chris Harvey - Telegraph (UK)


A great read.... Perfidia is a murder mystery, a subversive historical novel, and a dark meditation on power, politics, race and justice.
Mark Lindquist - Seattle Times


If Ellroy’s bitter visions entice you, Perfidia will take you once again to the underbelly of American history.... You will dive into Perfidia with a shiver that is equal parts anticipation and fear—because you know it's going to get very dark very fast.... Ellroy’s singular style has been described as jazzlike or telegraphic; here it is insomniac, hallucinogenic, nightmarish.
Colette Bancroft - Tampa Bay Times
 

[The L.A. Quartet] may be the ne plus ultra of noir, grittier than Chandler, more operatic than Hammett, and more violent even than Cain.... Ellroy whittles [his characters’] thoughts and actions into sentences the way others do shivs—lean, brutalist, and intended to puncture, to penetrate.
Chris Wallace - Interview
 

Ellroy launches his second L.A. Quartet with a sprawling, uncompromising epic of crime and depravity, with admirable characters few and far between.... This is as good a sample of Ellroy as any for newcomers, and old hands will find new perspectives on old characters intriguing.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A return to the scene of Ellroy’s greatest success and a triumphant return to form.... His character portrayals have never been more nuanced or—dare we say it—sympathetic.... A disturbing, unforgettable, and inflammatory vision of how the men in charge respond to the threat of war. It’s an ugly picture, but just try looking away.
Booklist


(Starred review.) [A] war novel like no other. It’s complicated, and the author wouldn’t have it any other way. There's no telling the good guys from the bad in Ellroy’s Los Angeles, because there are no good guys.... Ellroy is not only back in form—he’s raised the stakes.
Kirkus Reviews