1,104 pages isn't enough! But this is excellent.

Ellroy's latest is titled Perfidia. It's excellent, by his standards. Sprawling and intense, it weaves in characters you meet "later" in earlier works as well as new characters. I celebrated the release of Perfidia by re-reading ( for the 4th time?) the LA Quartet and the American Underworld Trilogy. BTW, I have read all those early novels once each. They show him mastering the form, but the later ones show him creating his own form. What's your favorite Ellroy?

Thanks for the review of Perfidia, as it certainly sounds like Ellroy is just as formidable as I remember him... I have not read any of his novels in quite some time now. I read the LA Quartet, backtracked to read the Lloyd Hopkins trilogy, and then finished off American Tabloid. But shortly after that I relocated (I was active duty military at the time) and got hitched, which caused Ellroy to fall off my radar screen. Then I branched out in other directions and haven't gone back (yet) to check out the remains of his Underworld Trilogy. I would probably have to re-read American Tabloid again to refresh myself with all of the characters.

I don't think that I have a favorite Ellroy novel, although I remember reading LA Confidential and thinking "Yeah, I can see why it took seven years for Hollywood to come up with a workable script from it" given how many layers that Ellroy had built into the book :-)