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Hello and welcome to The Spectator Books podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week, I'm very pleased to be joined by the demon dog of American fiction himself, James Elroy.

He was here to talk about his new novel, This Storm.

James, Mr. Dog, welcome.

Ow!

Now, I don't trust myself to set out the setup for this storm without either laying out spoilers or getting myself confused,

so maybe I'll ask you for the listeners who haven't read it yet.

It's a second volume in a sort of earlier LA quartet.

Can you set the scene a little bit, say what the book's Miller is?

Here's what the book is, and here's how it stands.

Chronologically, within my Oove.

The original L.A. Quartet, four novels published between 1987 and 1992, the Black Dahlia, the Big Nowhere,

LA, Confidential, and Whitechaz, were set in Los Angeles during the years

1946 to 1958.

I followed that up with the Underworld USA Trilogy, three big novels set around the world and around America, American tabloid, the Cold

6000. And Bloods are over. They covered the years from 58 to 72. Now I've gone back with the

second L.A. Quartet. I've taken characters from the first two bodies of work and placed them in Los Angeles during World War II as significantly younger people.

...