This time around we are looking at the American reaction in the police mover-and-shakers as a result of Pearl Harbour. Betty Davis and other actors, and the administration leaning on the police too. All on the same day as a gruesome murder (as you might expect) of a Japanese family in a seemingly ritualistic way.

Even as the pressure for it to be solved vacillates, as the public loves to rally against Japanese—but really all Asian people, since they don’t care to tell the difference at the best of times, except for when they’re slinging slurs—the case ends up owning the headspace of the players from a multifaceted way. Some see it as a point of exploitation, to fan the flames. Others to put it to bed with a manufactured killer. But to probably the “main” protagonist, a Japanese man himself, and the best forensics expert on the force, the case is a splinter in the mind. Something about it needles him and he just won’t let it go. And, of course, pulling on that thread is the A plot.

On the side, Dudley returns. Actually, I was. A bit exasperated by this (at first). But the fleshing out of this character is so well done I really didn’t mind. We finally understand how and why Dudley functions as he does, and how he interacts with women. A deft touch strings together that B plot with the A.

Everything wraps together very well. And boy, Ellroy’s apoplectic approach reaching to stars like Davis and HH and the first main perspective from a shrewd and manipulative woman who takes a while to really show what she’s actually after. In the start she functions more like a grenade than a character - but I liked that a lot. But I’m glad she became more complex. War profiteering in the states is just a phenomenal thing to put under the lens though. It’s far more interesting to me than the left - right political dance, and how it intersects with everyone gave the added bonus that most of these alt history Ellroy books do, which is actually educate you even as it’s hyperbolic and dramatic around the fictional elements.