Ellroy sets This Storm in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when President Roosevelt issued an order to send all Japanese Americans to internment camps. The casual references to “Japs” and “wetbacks” feel de rigueur for this early ’40s epic, and the racial paranoia befits the twisty breadth of the tale. One thread involves crooked police captain Dudley Smith using an army assignment in Mexico as his entrée into the heroin trade, while another follows a medical examiner and his assistant as they connect a body found in Griffith Park to a conspiracy involving pilfered gold and Nazi sympathizers. How Ellroy ties up seemingly loose plot threads and sticks the landing with a satisfying flourish is as electrifying as the hep vernacular he delights in. Such is the strength of Ellroy’s status in the world of letters that this new book carries a provocative cover: four arrows, bent to form the shape of a swastika. Ellroy acolytes will shrug it off, but folks outside that circle might be less forgiving.  by Robert Ham