ilhan reviewed This Storm by James Ellroy
On 'This Storm'
4 stars
Good story and great pacing. It's a disturbing read. It's wartime and there's a lot of racial tension, violence, and injustice.
Hardcover, 608 pages
English language
Published June 4, 2019 by Knopf.
It is January, 1942. Torrential rainstorms hit L.A. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops rate it a routine dead-man job. They're grievously wrong. It's a summons to misalliance and all the spoils of a brand-new war.
Elmer Jackson is a corrupt Vice cop. He's a flesh peddler and a bagman for the L.A. Chief of Police. Hideo Ashida is a crime-lab whiz, caught up in the maelstrom of the Japanese internment. Dudley Smith is an LAPD hardnose working Army Intelligence. He's gone rogue and gone all-the-way Fascist. Joan Conville was born rogue. She's a defrocked Navy lieutenant and a war profiteer to her core.
They've signed on for the dead-man job. They've got a hot date with History. They will fight their inner wars within The War with unstoppable fury.
Good story and great pacing. It's a disturbing read. It's wartime and there's a lot of racial tension, violence, and injustice.