YES PLEASE: James Ellroy embarks on "Second L.A. Quartet"

Great news: Self-described greatest crime writer ever James Ellroy has announced that he is returning to 1940's Los Angeles with a brand spanking new L.A. Quartet:

My design for “The Second L.A. Quartet” is unprecedented in scope, stylistic execution and dramatic intent.  I will take characters -– both fictional and real-life -- from the first two extended bodies of work, and place them in Los Angeles during World War II –- as significantly younger people.  The action will begin the day before the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and will carry an enormous range of people through to the end of the war.  Massive police investigations, political intrigue, grand love affairs, war profiteering, Axis sabotage plots.  Four 700-page hardcover novels that will span the homefront breadth of the greatest worldwide event of the twentieth century. 

The sequels will apparently be prequels.  The original L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz) took place in the period of the mid-1940's to the late 1950's.  Perfidia, the first book of the new quartet, takes place in 1941.

As usual, Ellroy will feature a number of real life and fictional characters including legendary LAPD Chief William H. Parker and Dudley Smith from the original L.A. Quartet.

Dudley Smith is the overarching villain of “The L.A. Quartet.”  In PERFIDIA, he’s the 36-year-old homicide detective investigating the baffling Watanabe case.  The case means money to Dudley. He’s embroiled in a hot wartime romance with screen legend Bette Davis.

Bette Davis?  I freaking can't wait for this book, but it looks like I'll have to wait about a year - per the L.A. Times, Perfidia isn't due out until fall 2014.