Tag Archives: Dudley Smith

Mid-summer reading report back: Perfidia, Japanese tattoos, eighties sleaze

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

Perfidia

Summer in Melbourne is usually the one time of the year I can be guaranteed to get a fair amount of personal reading done. As has become my annual practice, a short report back on the books I have got through is in order.

Perfidia, James Ellroy

I need to preface my comments on Perfidia by stressing I am a massive Ellroy fan. I have read all of his books – ALL of them – many more than once. I even liked The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s A Rover, the two books that most divided readers. So, it is with a heavy heart that I say Perfidia is very disappointing. The long awaited prelude to Ellroy’s LA Quintet, Perfidia takes place in Los Angeles over 23 days in December 1941, a period in which American went from being at piece to the attack on Pearl Harbour and the country being at war.

The focal point of the book is the brutal murder on the eve of Pearl Harbour of a Japanese family. The killings have all the hallmarks of traditional Japanese ritual deaths. Drawn into the murder investigation are future LAPD chief William H Parker, the meanest crime fiction cop ever created, Dudley Smith, a brilliant young Japanese police forensic scientist, and Kay Lake, a woman with a major thing for bad men.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Japan, Eurocrime, James Ellroy, True crime

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Melbourne International Film Festival progress report part 2: Rampart, Gangs of Wasseypur

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

This week I caught two of my must see crime films at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Rampart (2010) and Anupama Copra’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).

Rampart is latest in a long line of movies that combine two of crime cinema’s great thematic strands, bad cops and the idea that policing is little more than military occupation. Training Day (2001), Colors (1988), Q&A (1990), Copland (1997) Narc (2002), Cop (1988) and television series like The Shield are just a few examples of this genre. But if you thought Vic Mackey was bad, he’s got nothing on Dave ‘Date Rape’ Brown (played Woody Harrelson).

Rampart was directed by Oren Moverman who did the 2009 movie, The Messenger, a hard hitting story about two US marines whose job is to deliver death notices to the loved ones of US service men and women killed in action. Moverman collaborated on the Rampart script with crime writer James Ellroy.

The late 1990s, the Rampart Division of the LAPD is already investigation for fabricating evidence, police brutality and a string of other offences. Into this shit storm walks Brown, a 24-year veteran of the force. While on patrol his car is involved a collision. Brown chases down the other driver and savagely beats him. It’s routine brutality on Brown’s part, except this time, unknown to him, someone has filmed it.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from India, Crime film, James Ellroy, Melbourne International Film Festival, Neo Noir, Oren Moverman

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