Ellroy an impressive engineer in “Perfidia”

When we think of epic novels, we tend to think of Tolstoy or Marquez: sweeping, multigenerational works with hefty character lists and complex plots. We tend not to think of crime novels. At least, not yet.

James Ellroy is looking to change all that, and he's making a solid case with his latest work, 'Perfidia,” a hefty prequel to an impressive body of work that covers 31 years in the lives of the same characters.

Set in Los Angeles in December of 1941, 'Perfidia” centers on the brutal murder of a Japanese American family the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The case brings together Captain William Parker, a lousy cop with some lousy habits; Sgt. Dudley Smith, a worse cop with even worse habits; Kay Lake, a 21-year-old North Dakota transplant hellbent on making a new life; and Hideo Ashida 'the best crime-lab man in the West” who also happens to be of Japanese descent.

But the family murder is just the beginning. With a police force as corrupt as this one, there are naturally deviations into a number of side plots, including prostitution rings, witness coercion, betrayal, wire tapping, a gruesome plastic surgery experiment, a sprinkling of dysfunctional romance, and the exploitation of the Japanese internment camps, as Sgt. Smith so aptly describes: 'We did not create this global conflict, nor have we ordered the mass imprisonment of local Japanese. That stated, we would be remiss in not capitalizing on it.”

Ellroy carefully constructs each plot with the care of a spider building a massive web: each scene is crucial to the overall construction of the work, and each is connected in some way to the Watanabe murder. No matter how far we deviate, Ellroy brings us back to that bloodstained living room with a persistent question ('Who is the white man in the purple sweater?”) that stays stuck in our mind like the infectious melody of an old jazz song.

Beautifully constructed from every angle, 'Perfidia” is a true feat of literary engineering.