Author | James Ellroy |
---|---|
Cover artist | Jacket design by Chip Kidd |
Language | English |
Series | The Second L.A. Quartet |
Genre | Crime fiction, noir, historical fiction, historical romance |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, William Heinemann Ltd/Cornerstone (Waterstones's edition) |
Publication date | September 9, 2014, September 11, 2014 (Waterstones's edition) |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback), audio CD, audio download, and Kindle |
Pages | 720 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
ISBN | 978-0-307-95699-6 (first edition, hardcover), ISBN 978-0-434-02052-2 (Waterstones's edition, hardcover), ISBN 978-0385-35321-2 (eBook) |
OCLC | 866615100 |
813'/.54—dc23 | |
LC Class | PS3555.L6274P47 2014 |
Followed by | This Storm |
Perfidia is a historical romance [1] and crime fiction novel by American author James Ellroy. Published in 2014, it is the first novel in the second L.A. Quartet, [2] referring to his four prior novels from the first L.A. Quartet. Perfidia was released September 9, 2014. A Waterstones exclusive limited edition of Perfidia was released September 11, 2014, and includes an essay by Ellroy himself titled "Ellroy's History – Then and Now." [3] The title, Perfidia, is Italian for the word perfidy, (see also perfidia) and is also the name of the big band song, Perfidia. [4] [5]
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.
Perfidia was on The New York Times Best Sellers list for hardcover fiction at number 16 on September 28, 2014. [6] It also was an Editors' Choice at The New York Times on September 12, 2014. [7] NPR added Perfidia as one of the best books of 2014 out of approximately 250 titles. [8] Perfidia was also one of the eighty books nominated for the 2015 Folio Prize by the Folio Prize Academy. [9]
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).
The Black Dahlia (1987) is a crime fiction novel by American author James Ellroy. Its subject is the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles, California, which received wide attention because her corpse was horrifically mutilated and discarded in an empty residential lot. The investigation ultimately led to a broad police corruption scandal. While rooted in the facts of the Short murder and featuring many real-life people, places and events, Ellroy's novel blends facts and fiction, most notably in providing a solution to the crime when in reality it has never been solved. James Ellroy dedicated The Black Dahlia, "To Geneva Hilliker Ellroy 1915-1958 Mother: Twenty-nine Years Later, This Valediction in Blood." The epigraph for The Black Dahlia is "Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator, My first lost keeper, to love and look at later. -Anne Sexton."
Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
James Edgar Davis was an American police officer who served as the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1926 to 1929, and from 1933 to 1939. During his first term as LAPD chief, Davis emphasized firearms training. Under Davis, the LAPD developed its lasting reputation as an organization that relied on brute force to enforce public order. It also became publicly entangled in corruption. Members of the LAPD were revealed to have undertaken a campaign of brutal harassment, including the bombings of political reformers who had incurred the wrath of the department and the civic administration.
The Big Nowhere is a 1988 crime fiction novel by American author James Ellroy, the second of the L.A. Quartet, a series of novels set in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles.
Ellen Drew was an American film actress.
William Henry Parker III was an American law enforcement officer who was Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1950 to 1966. To date, he is the longest-serving LAPD police chief. Parker has been called "Los Angeles' greatest and most controversial chief of police". The former headquarters of the LAPD, the Parker Center, was named after him. During his tenure, the LAPD was known for police brutality and racism; Parker himself was known for his "unambiguous racism".
White Jazz is a 1992 crime fiction novel by James Ellroy. It is the fourth in his L.A. Quartet, preceded by The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, and L.A. Confidential. James Ellroy dedicated White Jazz "TO Helen Knode." The epigraph for White Jazz is "'In the end I possess my birthplace and I am possessed by its language.' -Ross MacDonald."
Blood on the Moon (1984) is a crime novel by James Ellroy, initially published in the US by The Mysterious Press, with the first UK edition being published by Allison and Busby. Blood on the Moon is the first installment of Ellroy's Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy. It was followed by Because the Night (1984) and Suicide Hill (1985). Although the novels are written in multiple perspectives and narrated omnisciently, the main character in all three is Lloyd Hopkins. Ellroy has stated that Blood on the Moon is his only novel that he is embarrassed by.
"Perfidia" is a 1939 Spanish-language song written by Mexican composer and arranger Alberto Domínguez (1906–1975). The song is sung from the perspective of a man whose lover has left him. The song has also been recorded in English and as an instrumental.
The L.A. Quartet is a sequence of four crime fiction novels by James Ellroy set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles. They are:
The Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy consists of the three crime fiction novels written by James Ellroy: Blood on the Moon (1984), Because the Night (1984) and Suicide Hill (1985).
Suicide Hill is a crime fiction novel written by James Ellroy. Released in 1986, it is the third and final installment of the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy.
Clandestine is a 1982 crime novel by American author James Ellroy. His second novel, it was initially published by Avon Books in the US, with the first UK edition being published by Allison and Busby in 1984. Ellroy dedicated Clandestine, "to Penny Nagler".
Brenda Allen was an American madam based in Los Angeles, California, whose arrest in 1948 triggered a scandal that led to the attempted reform of the Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.). Allen received police protection due to her relationship with Sergeant Elmer V. Jackson of the L.A.P.D.'s administrative vice squad, who reportedly was her lover.
LAPD '53 is a historical non-fiction book by James Ellroy and Glynn Martin, about the laws, crimes, and the LAPD, during the year of 1953. Ellroy is a writer known mainly for crime fiction set in Los Angeles. Martin was the executive director for the Los Angeles Police Museum.
The Black Dahlia: A Crime Graphic Novel is a graphic novel adaptation of James Ellroy's novel The Black Dahlia, by Alexis Nolent and David Fincher, and illustrated by Miles Hyman. Originally published in 2013 in French as Le Dahlia Noir, it was published in English in June 2016, by Archaia Entertainment, a division of Boom! Studios.
This Storm: A Novel is a 2019 historical fiction and crime fiction by American author James Ellroy. It is the second novel in Ellroy's "Second L.A. Quartet", in reference to the first "L.A. Quartet", and following the novel Perfidia. Ellroy dedicated the novel "To HELEN KNODE." The epigraph is "Blood alone moves the wheels of history. -Benito "Il Duce" Mussolini". It was released May 30, 2019, in the United Kingdom, and June 4, 2019 in the United States.
Dept. of Speculation is a 2014 novel by American author Jenny Offill. The novel received positive reviews, and has been compared to Offill's later work, Weather.