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This Storm

Review

This Storm

THIS STORM is like a drug. It is impossible to stop reading it once you start. Grains and particles (and chunks) of it linger in corners and crevices of your consciousness and memory, whether you are awake or asleep, as soon as you finish it. It cannot be accurately stated that you have never read anything like it unless you have had no contact with author James Ellroy’s prior work, particularly what has come to be known as the L.A. Quartet.

This is book two in the Second L.A. Quartet, which picks up a little more than a day after the conclusion of 2014's PERFIDIA and runs from December 30, 1941 to April 26, 1942. The protagonist remains the city of Los Angeles, which is still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor just a few weeks before. The narrative shifts among the perspectives and points of view of several characters, each of which describes several others.

"Ellroy is arguably creating the Great American literary collection single-handedly with this Quartet and its predecessor, and you really want to read every beautifully dark, twisted and graphic word of it to have your circuits irrevocably rewired."

Some are fictitious, such as Kay Lake, whose diary entries appear intermittently, and Hideo Ashida, an ahead-of-his-time LAPD forensic investigator who is laboring under two disadvantages, one of which is obvious and the other that he keeps hidden for preservation’s sake. Others are very real, from Count Basie and Orson Welles to Jack Webb and Ellen Drew. There is a “Dramatis Personae” section at the back of the book providing terse descriptions (“CHUCKIE DUQUESNE. Jazz musician and psycho killer.”) that assist, but do not always help, the reader in keeping track of who's who and what's what. One doesn’t want to stop reading the narrative long enough to look at it anyway. There is simply too much going on.

Ellroy has noted elsewhere that each sentence in THIS STORM advances the narrative. Just so. It is a stiff-legged, full-out march that observes the LAPD administering rough justice to rapists and Japanese citizens alike (though Ashida is spared this. Mostly). The case that propels the novel takes flight when a heavy thunderstorm reveals a long-buried corpse in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. It is important, yes, but there is so much else going on, including the primary and secondary effects of the Pearl Harbor attack (including citywide blackouts), the discovery of the bodies of two dead cops in a dive bar, and the sure knowledge that fifth columnists on both sides are attempting to control the city and country for their own political and selfish motives.

Ellroy covers it all with a third person narrative (except for Lake’s diary) that is delivered with a machine-gun cadence in short and long bursts, depending on purpose and mood. The dialogue in places sacrifices the potentially tender feelings and sensibilities of readers upon a burning altar of accuracy. Pejorative terms for every group, race, creed or color are unearthed (though they have never really been buried) and unabashedly displayed, but never gratuitously. Their use subtly explains the whys and wherefores of what is occurring.

There are no real good guys in THIS STORM. Every character is badly, even horribly flawed in some manner, though many try and succeed to do at least one right thing for the right reason if that can be discerned. At the same time, nothing --- not even the cover --- is what it seems to be at first blush. Conundrums abound, not the least of which is that one can keep up (barely) with the rapid-fire delivery of Ellroy’s prose by reading as slowly as possible. One gets lost otherwise, but please note: Ellroy is arguably creating the Great American literary collection single-handedly with this Quartet and its predecessor, and you really want to read every beautifully dark, twisted and graphic word of it to have your circuits irrevocably rewired.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub on June 14, 2019

This Storm
by James Ellroy