This Storm

A novel

By: James Ellroy

Narrated by: Craig Wasson

January '42. L.A. reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese residents are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city.

A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops tag it a routine dead-man job. They're wrong. It's an early-warning signal of Chaos.

There's a murderous fire and a gold heist. There's Fifth Column treason on American soil. There are homegrown Nazis, Commies, and race racketeers. It's populism ascendant. There's two dead cops in a dive off the jazz-club strip. And three men and one woman have a hot date with history.

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, lashed by anti-Japanese rage. Dudley Smith is PD 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.

L.A. '42. Homefront madness. Wartime inferno--This Storm is James Ellroy's most audacious novel yet. It is by turns savage, tender, elegiac. It lays bare and celebrates crazed Americans of all stripes. It is a masterpiece.

Critic reviews

Praise for James Ellroy:

“One of the great American writers of our time.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Ask me to name the best living novelist who’s fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted, and paranoid . . . and it becomes simple: James Ellroy. If insanity illuminated by highly dangerous strokes of literary lightning is your thing, then Ellroy’s your man.”
—Stephen King

“James Ellroy is the American Dostoevsky.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

modern noir but not for everyone

Did you love the movies: Blue Dahlia and L.A. Confidential? OK, but these books go far beyond in temperament but use some of the same characters, and serve as somewhat of a prequel. The 1st book in this series is Perfidia, then comes This Storm. Perfidia starts Dec. 1942 Los Angeles with this chaos of WWII declaration of war. Dudley Smith and other L.A. police with this help of Japanese CSI type investigator pursue a murder mystery. This Storm continues the same characters in a complex mystery involving "5th column" (anyone against the U.S. interests living in the U.S.) This includes Nazi and Soviet sympathizers and Japanese spies and a gold shipment heist. James Ellroy is like Mark Twain in giving you the raw racist 1950's point of views of many of the protagonists. Most are flawed antiheroes. So be ready for this ahead of time. In addition, James Ellroy is like Hemingway in speaking short sentences or down to phrases. The story is complex but he continually reviews various suspects enough that you can follow the story.

Great read

Ellroy is just pure fun. The plots are as thick as anything Raymond Chandler ever conceived. Anyone who has read him knows his unique, characteristic syntax. It is part of the joy one has when reading him. The narrator brings the subtleties of each character to life. Dudley Smith’s brogue is right on, and I have to say that he seems to be channeling a young Jack Nicholson when he voices Ed Satterly. The overly politically correct should be warned that almost all the characters are bigots One way or another. Their dialogue more than reflects this. Be prepared.

Not for the faint of heart

The Demon Dog of LA noir is back. This Storm feels like a Tarantino film transmogrified to the page. Its 26 hours of unrelenting extreme violence, racism, complex corruption, and worldwide destruction. Its certainly the most absurd and over the top Ellroy has ever been, and the least grounded in reality. I personally loved that, but I could see it being off-putting to hear about Himmler bathing in virgin Jewish blood or nazi orgies. Craig Wasson is a masterful storyteller and his inflections and emphasis make the story land 10 times harder. I can't recommend it enough, but know what you're getting yourself in to.

Sprawling. Ellory is on fire.

Incredibly complex charterizations woven into a time and place of great turmoil. You can smell the for cordite, feel the dirty LA streets under your feet, feel what it was to be american in the 40's, the sting of traitorous betrayal, racial animosity and for better or worse, (I say mostly better) the way things were and the way people spoke to one another. You feel the passions, pain and sorrows of the players. You simultaneously feel revulsion, empathy and a need to know where it all goes. As with all of Ellory's work, it was hard to put down. It almost feels like Christmas when JE drops a new one. If you haven't read the first LA Quartet or the Underworld Trilogy, they are truly amazing. Thanks, JE. I suspect, you were the Wolf.

Somewhat disappointed

I’m a big Ellroy fan, and have loved the Undwrworld and LA trilogies. I thoroughly enjoyed Perfidia and had high hopes for This Storm. This story picks up where Perfidia left off, and it took me some time to get reacquainted with the characters. Unlike previous reads, I could never really engage with this one. I’m reminded of a scene from the movie “Amadeus” where the Austrian king tells Mozart he liked the opera, it just had....too many notes. This book had too many words.