Perfidia (Ellroy novel)

Perfidia

First edition cover
Author	James Ellroy
Cover artist	Jacket design by Chip Kidd
Language	English
Series	The Second L.A. Quartet
Genre	Crime fiction, noir, historical fiction
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	September 9, 2014
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover & paperback), audio CD, audio download, and Kindle
Pages	720 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	[[Special:BookSources/ISBN+978-0307-95699-6+%28first+edition%2C+hardcover%29%2C+ISBN+978-0385-35321-2+%28%5B%5BeBook%5D%5D%29 |ISBN 978-0307-95699-6 (first edition, hardcover), ISBN 978-0385-35321-2 (eBook)]]
OCLC	866615100
Dewey Decimal	813'/.54—dc23
LC Class	PS3555.L6274P47 2014

This is the 2014 novel, for other uses, see Perfidia (disambiguation)

Perfidia is a 2014 historical fiction, and crime fiction novel, by James Ellroy. It is the first novel in The Second L.A. Quartet, referring to his four prior novels from the first L.A. Quartet. Ellroy dedicated Perfidia "To LISA STAFFORD". The epigraph is "Envy thou not the oppressor, And choose none of his ways. -Proverbs 3:31". Ellroy also includes the definition of Fifth Column.

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." retrieved 10 September 2014. The main characters of Perfidia are Hideo Ashida, a Japanese 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 twenty-three days with the dates and the time the chapters and events are occurring, as well as through Kay Lake's diary. The novel begins with 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 a.m. 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.