This Storm

January, 42. L.A. reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese 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. Theyre wrong. Its an early-warning signal of Chaos. Theres a murderous fire and a gold heist exploding out of the past. Theres Fifth Column treason at this moment, on American soil. There are homegrown Nazis, commies and race racketeers. Theres 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. Hes 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 a PD hardnose working Army Intelligence. Hes gone rogue and gone all-the-way fascist. Joan Conville was born rogue. Shes a defrocked Navy lieutenant and a war profiteer to her core. L.A., 42. Homefront madness ascendant. Early-wartime inferno This Storm is James Ellroys most audacious novel yet. It is by turns savage, tender, elegiac. It lays bare and celebrates crazed Americans of all stripes