It’s been a month and two days
since my last post, so let’s get back to my commentaries (I would love to be
able to call them reviews, but I’m aware they’re just three paragraphs on my
impressions of books!). Perfidia was
a novel I quite literally dove into after reading a falling madly in love with L.A. Confidential. Probably owing to its
size and bright red cover, my daughter tried to snatch it every time I opened
it. She loved it a lot. Me, less so.
Being Ellroy, it’s obviously
superbly written, fast-paced, witty, intriguing, intricate and all that. In
addition, the exploration of the fictionalized shady dealings in the
organization of internment camps for people of Japanese origins set-up in the
US at the start of WWII is absolutely fascinating.
But there is a but: while I
absolutely loved how Bernstein, Lana Turner, and plenty of other celebrities of
the time (or their look-alikes!) appeared in L.A. Confidential and The
Black Dhalia, I think that Ellroy goes too far with Bette Davis in Perfidia. An epic one-night stand with
Dud Smith, sure, but making her such a focal point of the plot was just a bit
excessive. And even in this case, I’m not quite sure how I feel about Ellroy
re-using yet again so many of his characters: they remain awesome, but I found
myself no longer as interested in their lives as I was in other books in which
they appeared.
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