American Tabloid

Underworld USA #1

by James Ellroy

1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age - an age that will last until the 1000 days of John F Kennedy's presidency. Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Pete Bondurant - Howard Hughes's right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa's hitman. Kemper Boyd - employed by J Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell - a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy's drive against organised crime. The festering discount of the age that burns brightly in these men's hearts will go into supernova as the Bay of Pigs ends in calamity, the Mob clamours for payback and the 1000 days ends in brutal quietus in 1963.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Noir, Contemporary

585 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 1995

About the author

Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).

Reviews

[Kemper · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Ellroy has called me a panty sniffer to my face. Granted, he calls everyone at his book signings a variety of colorful names, but I still like the idea that I’ve been personally mock-insulted by one of my favorite authors. This is his best novel, and my love for it is pretty much unconditional.

As proof of my devotion: My internet alias is from a character in it, and I’ve got an autographed copy of it sitting on my shelf along with an signed copy of the sequel, The Cold Six Thousand. The trilogy completes with the release of Blood's A Rover next week so I’m going back through the first two books, and it’d been a few years since I’d read American Tabloid. It was even better than I remembered.

This is Ellroy’s freaky take on American history from the late ‘50s through the JFK assassination, and it features Jack and Bobby Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, and Jimmy Hoffa. It’s got the Mafia and the CIA, Cuba and Cuban exiles, the 1960 presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the civil rights movement, and some heroin trade, just for laughs.

Ellroy uses one of his unholy main character trinities of Bad White Men doing Bad Things, but instead of limiting the action to post-war Los Angeles like he did with the LA Quartet of crime stories, he uses his three fictional characters chasing their own twisted obsessions and ambitions to probe the darker moments of a particularly juicy slice of American history.

Kemper Boyd is ex-FBI, who begins spying on the Kennedy’s for J. Edgar Hoover, and ends up devoted to Jack, even as he is moonlighting for both the CIA and the Mafia. He wants all his masters to unite in a play to oust Castro so that his behind-the-scenes schemes will make him wealthy enough to be just like a Kennedy, but he has to make sure to keep his loyalties compartmentalized.

Ward Littell is Kemper’s former partner and friend, and is still with the FBI. He hates the Mob and wants nothing more to go to work for Bobby Kennedy to get away from J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with persecuting harmless leftist groups. Even though he’s considered weak and cowardly, he shocks himself and everyone around him with the lengths he goes to fulfill his dream of being a Mob buster for RFK.

Big Pete Bondurant is a former LA cop and works as a criminal handyman for Howard Hughes. He runs blackmail divorce shakedowns and does the odd contract killing for the likes of Jimmy Hoffa in his spare time. Once arrested by Kemper and Ward, he likes Kemper’s style but hates Ward with a passion. Pete thinks he can ride shotgun to history by becoming Kemper’s partner in his various Cuban schemes, and he likes the sound of that rather than being Howard Hughes’s errand boy.

As all three of these men scheme and plot and commit horrible crimes to become more like the powerful men they are beholden to, they keep rubbing up against big events and desperately try to shape them to their will. What they all find out the hard way is that the people they’re dealing with didn’t become who they are by getting fooled by the men they regard as useful but inferior.

One of the things I absolutely love is Ellroy’s complete lack of buy-in to the JFK/Camelot bullshit. The myth goes that JFK was a glorious leader who was cut down because he stood up to the Bad Men in the country who wanted to take us into Vietnam. (An odd story considering that JFK is the one who started committing troops to Vietnam.) Ellroy brilliantly points out that the reality is that JFK was the son of a rich and corrupt man, and in one of the weirdest twists every, probably owed his presidency to the very people that he then let his zealot brother prosecute. (In all likelihood, the Mafia helped JFK take Illinois because of promises from guys like Frank Sinatra that JFK was reasonable.) RFK hated the Mob but turned a blind eye to the CIA recruiting Mafia contacts for trying to kill Fidel Casto. The Cuban exiles felt terribly betrayed when not only did JFK not fully commit to the Bay of Pigs invasion, he turned on them in the aftermath by having the Feds bust their training camps in the South.

If you believe in a conspiracy about JFK’s death, Ellroy points out that the guy might have brought it on himself by betraying so many people. And if there was a conspiracy, it probably wasn’t some Oliver Stone paranoid fantasy about some all-powerful military-industrial complex, it was probably a group of these type of guys, motivated by general JFK hatred that knew that all the embarrassing entanglements of JFK’s legacy would keep a real investigation from ever being done. (I personally don’t think there was a conspiracy, but JFK surely pissed off a lot of dangerous people by having his cake and eating it too and it makes for a great story.)

This is Ellroy at his best. Fully in control of his crazy staccato-brilliant-writer-with-ADD- style, and wildly spinning plots and counter plots with over the top violence and history as the backdrop.

Fair warning for those who haven’t read, there’s a lot of ethnic slurs in Ellroy’s work and he’s taken some heat for this over the years. He defends this by pointing out that he’s writing about evil white guys doing horrible things 50 years ago. They wouldn’t have been politically correct. He’s got a point, but it is pretty jarring reading in this day and age.

[brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

the nearest representation of what 20th century american history feels like. fuck the facts, we'll never really know what that is. and when ellroy's riffing away and it's all over-the-top and just plain stupid and threadheaded to a plot by the american government and CIA to hire the mafia to put a hit on a cuban commie head of state i wanna toss the shit aside because of how implausible ellroy can get and then i realize that this did actually happen and JFK did put a hit on Castro and JFK was banging starlets and whores and secretaries and that the whole thing, history and governments and agencies and outfits and syndicates and the whole damn mess, it's really one big lumbering idiot, a big cock spewing messy loads of fear and anger and confusion all over the face of america, a sinister and hateful thing that we can never really truly decipher or understand and ellroy's world of castro and kikes and niggers and whores and rednecks and hughes and hoover and JFK and RFK and KKK and all the parts of, what homo-hollywood-gossip-man lenny sands calls 'the life', are all toxic and diseased. and i don't think it's changed that much

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Check out the prose. Dig the style. Raymond Carver looks verbose. Hemingway looks weak and fey.

Dig the streamlined story. 1500 pages of plot compacted into 576.

Dig the violence. The greed. The manipulations, the conspiracies.

Check out the Outfit. The Beard. The Cadre. Jimmy and the Klan. The Hair and Little Brother all gunning towards history like a hophead mainlining a speedball.

Check out the geek posing at writing this review.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fates of three men, Ward Littell, Kemper Boyd, and Pete Bondurant, are forever entwined in the era of mobsters, Fidel Castro, and the Kennedys.

Yeah, that's not much of a teaser but there's no quick way to sum this one up.

American Tabloid takes key figures of the late 1950s and early 1960s and pisses all over them. Ellroy is back to the trinity of sin structure that worked so well in The Big Nowhere and LA Confidential. His three leads, Ward Littell, Kemper Boyd, and Pete Bondurant, rise and fall as they influence key historical events.

Politics makes strange bedfellows and Kemper Boyd is in bed with most of them. At various points of the book, he's linked with the FBI, CIA, the Kennedies, and probably other groups I can't remember at this moment. He's a wheeling-dealing son of a bitch. He was easily the most compelling of the three leads. Ward Littell started off as kind of a weakling and wound up being the biggest bad ass of the three. He also lost the most before winding up on top. Pete Bondurant struck me as the most pragmatic for most of the book and I'm hoping he'll be back for the sequel.

Ellroy doesn't pull any punches in this. The clipped sentence structure is in full effect, so much so that it's a little overwhelming at times. I still dug it. He also isn't afraid to cast aside the myth of the Kennedys being great men. JFK and RFK both come off as tools. J. Edgar Hoover is almost the Dudley Smith of the piece, a master strategist who never really takes the fall.

It was great how Littell, Boyd, and Bondurant were interwoven into the sagas of Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes, and the Kennedys, linking all of them together into a tapestry of lies, drugs, and death. American Tabloid is just as bleak as the LA Quartet in its own way. While Ellroy's Hollywood is a cesspool, his political world is even worse, a shit and vomit-flecked abattoir where everyone is in bed with everyone else and no one can be trusted. By the end, I didn't think any of the three leads would survive to the second book.

American Tabloid was a dark and exhausting read. By the time I was done, I felt like Kemper Boyd had done a number on me with brass knuckles. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

[pierlapo quimby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questo romanzo si può dire che segni un confine netto nella mia vita di lettore, la mia linea d'ombra.
Ricordo che lo comprai il giorno stesso dell'uscita, o quello dopo, avevo letto qualche anticipazione sui quotidiani (forse conservo ancora un ritaglio della Stampa da qualche parte) e quando lo presi dall'espositore all'ingresso di una minuscola libreria oggi chiusa, il libraio, caro amico, mi guardò annuendo con intima soddisfazione.
Conoscevo Ellroy solo di nome all'epoca, ma il suo progetto sotterraneo, di cui American Tabloid costituiva il primo tassello, mi sembrava portentoso.
Lo lessi, poi lo rilessi, poi rilessi ancora qualche brano, quelli con JFK in particolare.
Rimasi folgorato.
Amavo i classici a quei tempi, e la fantascienza, poco altro.
Con American Tabloid la mia percezione di lettore è radicalmente mutata, si è come amplificata.
C'è stato un prima e c'è un poi.
La mia linea d'ombra.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa. This book is the literary equivalent of sticking your head out of a car window at 80mph.

I don’t hear this talk much anymore, but at one point folks were very interested in defining and/or writing “The Great American Novel.” I assert that this may be it. Forget everything about grandma and her apple pie, with this book Ellroy grabs us by our collective red, white, and blue lapels and flings us out of the barn loft into a big warm pile of the real history of the United States. As unpleasant as it might be to admit, this is a country founded on the backroom deal – a “Made in China” tagged utopia with a pawn shop ticket still attached. Long after all of us are gone and the US is remembered as only another morbidly interesting failed experiment in human history, events such as the Bay of Pigs and the assassination of JFK will be what everyone remembers this country for. Too cynical? Perhaps, but unless you are a serious student of history I’ll bet that when the subject of Ancient Rome comes up the first thing that you think of has something to do with their late period descent into decadence.

This book revolves around three characters: Pete Bondurant, Kemper Boyd, and Ward Littell. At the beginning of this story Boyd and Littell are FBI agents and Bondurant is operating on a paler shade of law and order. These three men are like the Forrest Gumps of the Red Scare/Mafia espionage world of the late 50’s/early 60’s, as they are at least present for every big event that goes down during this time period and most likely had a hand in instigating it. Their allegiances change many times over as they fall in and out of bed with the Kennedy family, the Chicago Mafia, and the Anti-Castro movement. They are allied with one another and working against one another in equal measure, sometimes engaging in both actions simultaneously. Behind the scenes of it all J. Edgar Hoover appears to be the shadowy puppet master who is allowing everything to happen.

Is this sounding a little hinky – one grand, interweaving narrative where some of the same people are constantly involved? Kind of sounds like every conspiracy theory ever, doesn’t it? I thought the same at first, until remembering names such as Cheney and Rumsfeld that keep popping up again and again from Nixon all the way down to George W. In the hands of a lesser writer this story could have gotten unbelievable very quickly, but Ellroy is not a lesser writer.

Truth of the matter is that I loved all three of these characters. Sure they are all sociopaths, but they were my sociopaths. When Littell kept firing the shotgun over and over into the walls of Jules Schiffrin’s home, I had to stop and catch my breath. When Pete and Kemper have the Chicago Mafia after them, I was sincerely worried for their safety.

It amazes me that Ellroy can stir such emotions for characters that are given so few background details outside of the action at hand. Ellroy’s clipped writing style, almost a hard-boiled style filtered through minimalism, manages to cover so much ground. Any other writer probably would have milked this material into three or four standalone novels. Along with the straight narrative, certain chapters also consist of wiretap transcripts and magazine articles for the Lenny Sands penned gossip rag Hush-Hush. The Hush-Hush articles had to have been a total blast for Ellroy to write. Alliteration a go go.

As I have already hinted, this book covers many factual events and includes many characters that were actual historical figures in that era. The Kennedy family basically serves as the hinge that the whole story swings upon, but lots of other people show up such as Hoover, Sam Giancana, Howard Hughes, and Frank Sinatra (although more or less as a cameo). No character in this book comes out smelling like roses either. One has to believe that the heirs of these men would have been righteously pissed off when they got wind of how Ellroy had portrayed Grandpa Joe, etc. Perhaps Knopf has a whole kennel of pit bull lawyers who smoothed everything over pre-release, but it makes me love Ellroy just that much more to know that he had the balls to write this book in the way that he did.

This is a brilliant book. The mere thought of it makes me want to grab a beer and rye lunch and go put the brass knucks on a stupe.

One caveat: There are a multitude of racial slurs throughout this novel. No one is excluded, except maybe the honkies (although maybe Howard Hughes called a couple of people “Jive Turkey,” but I might be thinking of something else…). I accepted this as authentic in that this was probably the way most American males spoke during this time period. If exposure to such words causes you intense pain, you may want to keep that in mind.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began reading this book around mid-December but given the chaotic nature of my life at the time, I found it nearly impossible to focus. Seeing as Ellroy’s American Tabloid is a novel that commands your attention, a wandering mind will do you no favors. So when things settled down, I picked it back up, determined to dive back into the world of mid-20th century America and read all about The Kennedys, the FBI/CIA, Jimmy Hoffa and the Communist Red Scare.

With American Tabloid, Ellroy is uncompromising in his presentation of US history - he lays it out, warts and all. While I enjoy crime fiction from this era, I’m not a connoisseur when it comes to the actual events that occurred surrounding JFK and his rise to power, so there were many instances when I had to seek out the answer to the question, “did this really happen?”

Man, saying that there’s a lot going on here would be an understatement. However, Ellroy attempts to boil the story down to three central characters: power-driven Kemper Boyd, a “retired” FBI agent tasked by director Hoover to infiltrate Robert and Jack Kennedy’s committee; Ward Littell, an FBI agent with an intense hatred for organized crime; and Pete Bondurant, a retired cop working as a cleaner of sorts for the reclusive Howard Hughes.

There’s little rest for Ellroy’s cast when they’re all playing the long con through major events in the early 1960s; keeping track of their movements was like watching one of those street grifters with the ball-cup shuffle. I found myself continuously re-reading chunks of texts and whole chapters as I tried to stay in the loop. I’m not sure if anyone else has had this issue but at times it became downright exhausting. Not a fun novel to read at night before bed when you’re falling asleep.

I’m big on Ellroy and his jackhammer-style prose, a method that inspired another author I enjoy in Don Winslow. Sometimes you want to read a story that hits you like a machine gun, you know? Short, punchy sentences that accentuate both the blunt violence as well as the hardness of his characters.

Despite often being listed as his defining work, in my opinion American Tabloid falls just short of my favorite of his novels, The Black Dahlia. That being said, I’ll keep exploring Ellroy’s back catalogue. I can’t wait to dig further into the underbelly of American history.

***It’s worth noting that due to Kemper sharing the same name as one of the three main characters as well as always sporting an Archer-inspired avatar, I had trouble picturing Kemper Boyd as anyone other than the super-spy himself.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“America was never innocent.”

“It's time to demythologise an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.”

American Tabloid is one of three big books by major authors I’ve read in the last twelve months focused on what they would all agree is a key event in twentieth-century American/world politics, the killing of JFK: 11/22/63 by Stephen King; Libra by Don DeLillo, and this 1995 publishing and award-winning sensation by the author of The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential.

A combination of The People’s History of the United States and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, but far more propulsive, something like being body-punched with tough, staccato sentences, but, I don't know, admiring him for his pugilistic skills. Ellroy is maybe the most cynical writer I know this side of Celine, but he's also politically astute. Ultimately angry, not despairing. Anti-romantic, assuredly, on the issue of Making America Great Again.

So American Tabloid, using an LA scandal rag, Hush Hush, as its sometime model, all alliteration and bombast, is a rapid-fire, 500-page epic, connecting the dots between the CIA, FBI, the Mob, Jimmy Hoffa, Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, the Kennedys, Sam Giancana, Fidel Castro and a host of minor players. Three central characters--Ward Littell, Pete Bondurant and ​​Kemper Boyd--are (I presume) fictional characters, but trust me, everyone in this book is despicably culpable in their own ways. You thought Oliver Stone’s JFK was crazy paranoid leftist conspiracy theory? Read this to see if it makes more sense, and we can get together at a JFK Conspiracy Convention next month, wearing Groucho masks. But in general I am a believer that no one is innocent, that Oswald did not act alone, as is the case with something like 80% of Americans, according to recent polls.

“Jimmy Hoffa said, “I know how Jesus must have felt. The fucking pharaohs rose to power on his coattails like the fucking Kennedy brothers are rising on mine. . . Fucking Jesus turned fish into bread, and that’s about the only thing I haven’t tried. I’ve spent six hundred grand on the primaries and bought every fucking cop and alderman and councilman and mayor and fucking grand juror and senator and judge and DA and fucking prosecutorial investigator who’d let me. I’m like Jesus trying to part the Red Fucking Sea and not getting no further than some motel on the beach” (you may have heard the mob--Oak Parker mobster Sam Giancana, in cahoots with union boss Hoffa) engineered a win in Illinois for Kennedy over sweaty “red-baiting” future-deposed-King Nixon?).

Anyway, the time frame of five major sections, 100 chapters in each section, some as short as one page, proceeding in chronological fashion, is from November 22, 1958, right up until the moment President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is killed on November 22, 1963. So this is all just a political and social and moral foundation for Ellroy’s case.

One interesting aspect of this book, which is the first of a trilogy, is that Lee Harvey Oswald is not even mentioned once. King’s book is a time travel book, an alt-history fantasy, and a romance, but Oswald’s descent to Presidential killer is documented with some detail. Oswald acted alone, King believes. In DeLillo’s Libra the whole focus is Oswald, but it is Oswald suborned by the CIA. In American Tabloid, we just lay all the political and historical groundwork for the murder, and as Ellroy would say, no one is innocent. The groundwork includes the “mobbed up” millions of Joseph Kennedy, the Kennedy patriarch, his sex addict son Jack, (the “author” of Profiles in Courage, the book that won the Pulitzer Prize but was actually written by his speechwriter Ted Sorenson), his disastrous Bay of Pigs, his brother Bobby’s anti-mob obsession, their "liberal" views on Civil Rights.

“Facts can be bent to conform to any thesis.”

“I'm saying it's so big and audacious that we'll most likely never be suspected. I'm saying that even if we are, the powers that be will realize that it can never be conclusively proven. I'm saying that a consensus of denial will build off of it. I'm saying that people will want to remember the man as something he wasn't. I'm saying that we'll present them with an explanation and the powers that be will prefer it to the truth, even though they know better."

If you read this book, you can see many people who likely wanted to kill the Kennedys, and for that matter, MLK, too. And the book is told with excerpts of wiretap transcriptions, news articles and other “document inserts.” Taped Jack Ruby stripper convos from motel room trysts with some of the principals. Sleaze and politics, traversing from Chicago to Miami to LA, mapping the country like weaving a spider web of politics/sex/drugs.

Of the three books on JFK by major authors, all award-winning, I thought this was the best, but it’s not easy to read, as dark a vision of hate and corruption in American politics as one can imagine. But you, this was a time in which a popular President, his popular brother, a popular civil rights leader and plenty of other activists were shot down. Hard times. I read this after Rachel Maddow’s Blow Out, her send-up of the corrupt and world-destructive oil and gas industry, which makes it clear that this is not an isolated incident, men of power bent on world domination/destruction

So! I really need to read some happy picture books again. I mean, things were bad in the underbelly of the sixties, Ellroy makes clear, when I was wearing flowers in my hair. The sixties was a time of hope and peace, man? Ellroy would laugh and say they are just one point on the map of self-destruction we are on now. His LA trilogy maps the decade before that. Maybe WWII speaks for itself.

Stephen King said he and his wife were divided over whether Oswald acted alone. He sez Oswald was just a crazy solo killer. His wife sez it was a murder involving the guvamint. After reading Libra and this book, you are gonna side with the wife.

[LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a LONG read, loaded with umpteen characters and written in choppy, gumshoe detective language. The basic run down -this is a chronologically presented story of three characters who played a role in the eventual assassination of JFK.

My curiosity about Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes, J Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, the Cubans, and the government are what kept me reading, but the language and content was very much a throwback (read offensive). Here were lots of babes and their booberage, very violent murders, sex acts staged and secretly taped, derogatory terms for any minority you can think of, and JFK acting like a complete sex addict. Jimmy Hoffa, we learned, liked to slaughter sharks with a machine gun, reserving a baseball bat with spikes for close-up work. Howard Hughes was an incredible dope fiend who hated the Kennedys. Old Joe Kennedy, the former bootlegger, was involved in highly illegal dealings which ripped off working class families but made him a bundle - all while his sons were in DC.

The brick-hard tone and chipped little sentences are exactly in the style of writing in old tabloid newspapers in the late 50s and early 60s - the book feels authentic, but I confess to feeling frustrated during the middle section of this big thing.

If you like JFK conspiracy tales and can handle this very old fashioned noir language AND the book's length, go for it. Ellroy also wrote The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential, o if you enjoyed the movie adaptations, this too might be up your alley. My enjoyment was a 3.5 but will bump to 4 just for the style.

[David Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Y si el verdadero sueño americano fuera una pesadilla bien escrita?

Lo digo en serio. ¿Y si todo ese relato de libertad, progreso y democracia no fuera más que una pantalla de humo para encubrir una orgía de corrupción, racismo, traiciones y asesinatos institucionalizados? No. No es una provocación. Es una posibilidad bastante razonable si uno escucha lo que cuenta James Ellroy en América, con el tono de quien te apunta a la cara con una linterna en plena noche y te dice: “Mira bien. Esto es lo que hay”. Y, claro, con esa declaración de intenciones ya no puedes apartar la vista.

Porque Ellroy no se anda con sutilezas. En esta novela no te cuenta una historia: te lanza una granada de fragmentación. Estamos entre 1958 y 1963, justo antes del asesinato de Kennedy, y lo que se despliega aquí es una sinfonía salvaje de poder y conspiraciones. FBI, CIA, mafia, anticastristas, políticos, prensa… todos están metidos en el barro, y el barro, amigo, les llega hasta el cuello. Los protagonistas, tres hombres tan peligrosos como contradictorios, se mueven por ese submundo como si lo conocieran de toda la vida. Y, probablemente, lo hagan. Porque aquí no hay héroes. Hay peones que se creen reyes, psicópatas con carné del gobierno y traidores con principios, si es que eso tiene algún sentido.

Y todo esto no funcionaría sin una voz que lo escupa como se merece. Porque lo que hace Ellroy con la prosa no es escribir: es tallar con cuchillo. Cada frase es un golpe seco. Ellroy utiliza un estilo de escritura crudo, conciso, incluso en ocasiones vulgar. Cortes breves, ritmo eléctrico, como telegramas en plena guerra. Nada de adornos ni respiraciones largas. Todo es urgente, tenso, brutal. Su estilo no te acaricia; te empuja contra la pared y te cachea en busca de ingenuidad. Y si encuentra algo de eso en ti, lo destruye. No es solo una elección estética: es una declaración de principios. En América, la forma es el fondo. La violencia de la sintaxis es la violencia del país. La prosa está desangrada, sudada, manchada de whisky y pólvora. Escriben los bajos fondos, no la academia.

Y ese mismo estilo marca también la manera en que se mueve la cámara narrativa El narrador es omnisciente, sí, pero no esperes imparcialidad ni neutralidad. Ellroy cambia de punto de vista constantemente, con una agilidad que roza la esquizofrenia, y nos mete en la cabeza de sus tres protagonistas: Pete Bondurant, ex policía y matón de la mafia; Kemper Boyd, agente doble —o triple, o qué sé yo— con aspiraciones de grandeza; y Ward Littell, un abogado del FBI con fe en la ley, que va descubriendo que los principios son un lujo que pocos se pueden permitir. Lo más fascinante es cómo Ellroy consigue que entendamos a estos monstruos, que nos seduzcan incluso. Y no porque los redima —ni de coña—, sino porque los expone sin filtros, con todas sus contradicciones, su ambición, su miedo. Son humanos. Y eso da más miedo que cualquier villano de cartón piedra.

Y lo mismo ocurre con la estructura: detrás del caos aparente se esconde una precisión endemoniada disfrazada de salvajismo. Hay algo profundamente adictivo en cómo Ellroy construye la novela: no solo por el ritmo, que es implacable, sino por la forma en que entrelaza tramas, documentos, informes, diálogos cruzados, titulares. Es un mosaico conspiranoico que se va armando como una coreografía del caos. Y de repente todo encaja. No por arte de magia, sino por una lógica fría, despiadada y brutalmente coherente. Aquí no hay giros forzados ni sorpresas baratas: todo está en su sitio. Como un crimen perfecto.

Por eso América no juega en la misma liga que La Dalia Negra o L. A. Confidential. Ya no estamos en el noir clásico de los años 40 o 50. Aquí la novela negra se convierte en una novela política, histórica, casi metafísica. Si La Dalia Negra hablaba del mal como una obsesión individual, América lo trata como un sistema operativo. Aquí el crimen no es un desvío del camino: ‘es’ el camino. Y lo recorremos enterito con la obediencia de quien ya ha firmado el contrato con el diablo.

Porque ese camino está empedrado de todo lo que más duele: racismo institucional, misoginia endémica, homofobia, corrupción estructural, manipulación mediática, tortura como rutina... y Ellroy no se corta un pelo. No moraliza, no disculpa, no explica. Muestra. Y tú decides qué hacer con eso. Es incómodo, sí. Pero es incómodo como una verdad que preferirías no saber, y que, una vez escuchada, ya no puedes olvidar.

Y lo peor es que no es ficción pura. Lo más escalofriante es que Ellroy no inventa. Fantasea, sí, pero parte de hechos reales, nombres reales, operaciones reales. La CIA, Hoover, Castro, Kennedy, la mafia, Hollywood... Todo está ahí. Y no en plan cameo: están metidos hasta el cuello. Giancana, Trafficante, Marcello, Hoffa… los monstruos reales que tiraban de los hilos mientras los políticos daban discursos sobre libertad y barbacoa. A veces parece que los personajes ficticios de la novela están de paso por una realidad mucho más sucia de lo que nos contaron. Como si Bondurant, Littell y Boyd se colaran en la Historia por una puerta trasera que daba directamente al infierno. Y eso hace que la lectura tenga un regusto de documental pervertido. Una versión noir del noticiero que nunca te contaron. El infierno bajo la bandera de las barras y estrellas. Y sí, J. Edgar Hoover era básicamente el jefe final de este videojuego de corrupción; con traje, gomina y sonrisa de funeraria.

Leer América es como abrir una puerta que deberías haber dejado cerrada. Pero ya que estás dentro, quédate. Aguanta el ritmo, la crudeza, el cinismo. Porque si consigues pasar las primeras páginas —que son un muro de ladrillos y fuego—, lo que viene es uno de los retratos más feroces, lúcidos y salvajes del poder en la narrativa contemporánea. Y cuando acabas, te queda esa sensación de que algo se ha roto. O de que algo, quizá, ya estaba roto desde el principio y Ellroy simplemente ha arrancado el velo que lo ocultaba.

¿Te atreves a entrar en el sueño americano sin filtros? Vale. Pero no digas que no te avisé.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

“He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History.”
― James Ellroy, American Tabloid



Could I give this six stars? I'm almost serious. I've said in reviews of le Carré, that long, long after the temporary prince and princesses of pop literature (Yes, I'm looking at your Foer brothers, etc) are dead and their novels pulped for the next 21st-century style of Ikea furniture, people are going to still be reading James Ellroy.

Look, I'm only 1/3 into the Underworld USA trilogy, but I'm ready to announce that for me, at least, James Ellroy is America's John le Carré and the Underworld USA trilogy :: the Karla Trilogy, thus 'America Tabloid' :: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It is seriously that good.

This book belongs right next to Mailer's Oswald's Tale and Harlot's Ghost, Don Delillo's Libra and Underworld, and Robert Littell's The Company. I mean, this dude knows how to write. I read a review the other day where they took 10 or so sentences from this book and the sentences were beautiful and hung by each word. One word taken out would destroy the whole meaning of the sentence. This guy isn't fancy dancing around with his prose. He is making every period, every verb count.

I'm glad, however, that I read Ellroy's LA Quartet first. That way I had a sense of context for Ellroy's approach to prose, violence, sex, paranoia, brutality, loyalty, hustle, hustlers, racism, money, power, police, crime, politics, corruption, greed, graft, the press, pulp, movies, history, etc. And he weaves it all beautifully. My guess is the Underworld USA trilogy is going to be more of a unified giant book broken into threes than his other series. The LA Quartet inhabited the same characters, same spots, same themes, but each stood fairly independent. I expect The Cold Six Thousand is going to build directly on this novel and Blood's a Rover will build again on Book 2.

Anyway, I have lots more I could say, but why. Go read it. It will leave you wanting to type all night and say nothing too. Ellroy will beat you, love you, turn on you, and leave you for dead.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 5 out of 5]

If readers haven’t encountered one of my schizophrenic reviews that litter my GR book diary here and there, I’m writing another one again. I always feel torn when I admire the talented writing and/or depth of research and ideas of a writer, and ultimately, the author’s tricky mind, but at the same time, I also think the subject/characters are despicable, horrible and unpleasant. One such book that I read previously was by Octavia Butler, ‘Fledgling’. ‘American Tabloid’ is another. Once again, I wish I had access to a gif which blinks back and forth between one star and five.

There almost isn't a single character towards whom I felt anything but horror disgust dislike. Every antagonist, and they ALL are antagonists, are monsters abusers sadists murderers at the worst, and shallow selfish narcissistic lying bullies at best. They are all frenemies without an ounce of friendly feeling towards each other, but they seem to prefer avoiding anything like conspicuous killing out of self-preservation, except when they feel it's ok.

Women are treated dreadfully. They are only sperm-inducing sex toys. They are either tissues for absorbing fluids or madonnas to be kept dusted and polished.

Non-white races are all cannon fodder or pawns, never thought of as exactly human life, to the characters.

This is one of those books I can tell men automatically adore and discuss and choose characters as avatars because they want to BE that guy. Probably the white males in particular will think some of the characters as cool as James Bond. From my actual experience with men, generally, they tend to ‘lean in’ about guns, pissing contests, hierarchical power plays and bloody force before any intellect is engaged. If you disagree, hang out with any gamer who will be blasting away happily and participating in the rape, mutilation and destruction of females along with opponents, children, animals, villages, etc. Of course, most of them would NEVER in real life, right? I’m reminded of another book which seems to attract men while dismaying women with the same divide of internal genetic compass - ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac.

Conspiracy fans will believe every word in this book is actually TRUE.

The eastern US coast media employees, such as from news and high society magazines, organizations like Washington Post, Time and Vanity Fair, probably did not stop talking about, drop names from, giggle over and muse over, this book for days when it first was published. It’s an insider book. The novel not only is about a group of men vying for attention from the most famous family in America, the Kennedys, John Kennedy being often called the one President who was glamorously ‘royal’ in the eyes of American citizens, but in real life had a life of drama and trauma, including the worst thing, assassination, which cut his life short at a young age, leaving behind a beautiful widow and young adorable children, one still a toddler. At the time, people often felt it was the end of political innocence in the USA, with most of the population unaware of any dangers facing the world beyond the Cold War and the atomic bomb. Otherwise, we all were watching family sitcoms in which the white characters always dressed nice, never swore or drank, and the plots were usually about a young son who lied to his mother about visiting his friend to see a movie instead of studying for a test, with taped fake laugh tracks. This book is not about any of this manufactured innocence which was in force in the USA at the time, however. Instead, it is a fictional insider’s look at the men who populated the underbelly of politics and criminal organizations supported by out-of-control legal police organizations.

The famous characters in the novel - John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes - all are actually still heavily weighted with mythology and conspiracy theories in real life, with some of the actual tabloid stories written at the time having been proved true after all. The ‘heroes’ we follow in alternating chapters throughout - Pete Bondurant, Ward Littel, Kemper Boyd - are all fictional employees of the FBI during the actual non-fictional period when the FBI was worried about the Mafia and the Cuban Communist takeover by Fidel Castro. The years 1958-1963, which pass quickly for the reader despite the book being almost 600 pages (but not without a ton of grief, agony and dread for every person who has the horror of being blackmailed or coerced or tricked into secret associations with these fictionalized devils of 1963), were important to USA political history.

This reader did not shed a single tear for anyone. They are all bad people in this story.

The plot is amazing. It dazzles with political complexity, trickery, intelligence and plausibility. I kept thinking, ‘this scene actually may have happened somewhere at some time, even if perhaps not at this time and place with these characters.’

I am aware of realpolitik and I have seen it being applied. However, I found the novel’s endless stream of practical viciousness, indifference and avarice under the cover of realpolitik while the characters were actually trying to make themselves rich or powerful too depressing and disgusting. It was more than a touch of the same themes of the movie, ‘Pulp Fiction’, only from the viewpoint of people who have a badge and the authority of the FBI, CIA and the Oval Office. Also, while cinema seduces with quickly assimilated situations and simplified plots, accompanied with catchy music amplifying the manipulated feelings of the viewers, this was plain sad, creepy, horrifying and stomach-turning because of the waste of lives playing at dark criminality. I felt very bad for those characters who had a genuine desire to help the country or catch bad guys, but who end up embracing selfishness themselves with the noir requirements of surviving betrayals and lack of honesty and support. Still, I couldn’t feel a lot of love for anyone.

The writing is experimental. The author has eliminated extraneous words. Sentences are choppy and difficult. To parse the meaning despite the short sentences and short paragraphs can take a second longer than usual to comprehend what is happening. I still can’t understand why the author did this, and I do not like it besides. Usually, an author plays with either language or writing conventions in order to enhance the themes or metafictional meanings, or it may express a sly personal irritation. Perhaps the author is expressing subtextually in a visual and verbal manner that all of these fictional, evil clever gentlemen are missing important things in their characters which would have rounded them out into being normal human beings, similar to the effect of missing words in the sentences, that would give warmth or sympathy to them.

I truly hated this book. The dark sides of human nature are rarely captured with such plausible believability in a fiction novel. I also truly admired this book. It is thought-provoking and memorable. I’m sure it is already considered a classic for many people. Cartoon darkness is fun for me. This book, despite veering into almost a feeling of satire, is not fun. The satirical feel is due entirely to how actual criminality can be stranger than fiction.

I did warn you that I was going to be weird about this novel….

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

On Tour

In 1996, Ellroy toured Australia with one of my favourite bands, the Jackson Code.
Ellroy did a number of readings from AT, then the band played and then he sang/narrated with the band.
It was a great night, although I am hazy on the detail.
It was an early date with my wife, and I didn't get as drunk as I would otherwise have done (and do now), but I am hazy nevertheless.
I don't know how they got the idea to do a gig like this.
I remember that Ellroy wore a great Hawaiian shirt.
He looked like he had just given up alcohol, but still had a hangover.
He was still hurting from his last hangover and he was now hurting from the abstinence as well.
Sounds like Purgatory.
Of course, my memory might have totally failed me and he might actually have been swigging from a bottle of bourbon the whole way through the gig.

Snarski Voices

The Jackson Code conjure(d) up beautiful geographical atmospheres that suggest early settlement Sydney Cove, France, California, anywhere noir where people are desperate to make a quid.
Their singer, Mark Snarski, has one of the best male rock voices I've ever heard, if you're into David McComb of the Triffids and/or John Cale and/or Mark's nearly equally talented brother, Rob Snarski (Black-eyed Susans).
I think Ellroy sang a few covers, as well as talking over the top of their soundtrack.
If I said one of the covers was "Blue Velvet", I might be wrong, but I hope you get the drift.
The gig was a unique opportunity to see a side of someone you wouldn't otherwise see.

The Gift

Ellroy signed books and chatted after the gig.
I already had a copy of AT, which I was reading and hadn't thought to bring to the gig.
I decided to buy another copy for a friend and get him to sign it.
I stupidly decided I would give the autographed copy to an ex-girlfriend.
When I gave it to her months later, she grunted some sense of unenthusiastic recognition, but she ultimately thought the book was too long and the sentences were too short and never finished it.
Don't you hate ungrateful gift recipients?
Don't you hate ungrateful ex-girlfriends (or boyfriends)?
One day, I'll break into her place and steal it back.

How Dedicated Can You Be?

Some readers might wonder why I didn't just keep the book.
I wouldn't have to break in and confront her husband who's a bouncer.
Good question.
Well, I had made the mistake of asking Ellroy to dedicate it to my friend, Janet.
He asked me what I wanted him to say and I said, "I hope this book doesn't remind you of your ex-boyfriend, because he gives me the shits."
In Janet's eyes, that would be definitive evidence that I had actually met him and I wasn't bullshitting her.
He looked at me quizzically, then he tittered politely like a Hollywood exec rejecting a pitch, and I could tell he wasn't going to comply with my request.
Still, he scribbled away and handed the book back to me in a way that suggested that he and my ex had just signed a pact and maybe, perhaps, I shouldn't sneak a peek at what he had written.
Obviously, my wife grabbed it when we got in the car (she was driving) and she exclaimed, "What's this all about?"
I know better than to answer when she asks that question, so I signalled for her to show me the book.
Inside I noticed that Ellroy had written:
"Janet, you remind me of my mother, you've got really great tits. James Ellroy"
I did get one side-benefit out of this experience, and that was I got to do a near-perfect replica of Ellroy's autograph on my copy of AT.
But don't tell anyone.

[Maciek · Rating 4 out of 5]

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can’t lose what you lacked at conception.

Conspiracy theorists have been among us since the inception of mankind. Whenever an event of a particular scale and importance happens they will be there, in the background, quietly (well, not always) disputing the official story and proposing alternative explanations. Conspiracists cover all sorts of events - from school grades (the tests were rigged), football games (they were rigged), business deals (rigged) to matters of great importance, like the presidential elections (guess what). The largel the scale of event, the bigger the conspiracy behind it - global warming is a good example (Michael Crichton wrote a book focused exactly on this - it's titled State of Fear. I'll have to read it one day). Perhaps the most interesting (and often outlandish) conspiracy theories arise in events involving violence and murder. Assasinations provide good fodder - murders of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and of course President Kennedy all gave life (bad pun) to conspiracies which were supposed to surround them. The US government seems to always be at least a partial perpetrator of American conspiracies - a prime example are the 9/11 attacks on America. There are people who believe that the buildings have been brought down by a controlled demolition, but these are the calm ones. The real conspiracists dispute even the existence of hijacked planes - they believe that missiles hit the towers, and they only looked like the planes because of CGI. Passengers and crew of the planes said to be hijacked have been either killed by the government or live calm, brainwashed lives on some small Carribean island.

These theories originate in our need to seek patterns and explanations of things. Sometimes it's hard for us to accept that in life things happen which are completely random, driven by chance. This also gives plenty of opportunity for the employment of our creative imagination. Elaborate schemes and structures are made up to fit the seemingly obvious conclusion - how could a few men wield the knife right into the heart of America without powerful help from the inside? How can a single, unremarkable man kill the most powerful man on earth? Surely he was just a puppet, whose strings were pulled by the group who selected him, put him in the proper place and gave him the gun.

American Tabloid is concerned with the JFK assasination, and allows James Ellory to invent conspiracy upon conspiracy, basing on his fascination with the American underworld. Set all over the USA and some other areas in the late 50's and early 60's, Ellroy's novel draws real historical characters - The Kennedy brothers, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimy Hoffa, Jack Ruby among others - and mixes them with Ellroy's fictional creations; all breathe and speak and feel and are alive, and if we did not know otherwise it would be difficult to tell that there was no Pete Bondurant, Ward Littel or Kemper Boyd. Ellroy is completely unsentimental towards the real and imagined characters, and knows the period he's writing about, henceforth they come at the reader with all their dirt, racism, swindling and corruption which altogether is all too human. As the novel progreses it becomes difficult to separate Ellroy's fiction from historical fact, which perhaps is the greatest compliment one can give to a novel which aims at succeeding in exactly that; given the fact that we never will be allowed such an intimate look at lives of the rich and the deadly, these novels are all we've got. And this one is particularly good; in it Ellroy packs more punches than Mike Tyson in his best bout. His writing is what carries it; it's gritty and taut, stripped of all excessive fat, unnecesary adjectives and adverbs all ripped of, leaving only the bare bone to offend you with its wrong whiteness. Ellroy's prose is a tribute to all the hardboiled classics of the past and it might take some using to, but once you do the novels pulls you right in and won't let go. Another, less skilled writer might have taken twice as many pages; Ellroy leaves Hemingway coughing in the dust. What he has done in American Tabloid has almost a hypnotic quality to itself; with all its violence you almost want to look away but it's simply too compelling and gripping. To say more would spoil it; go and try it. Chances are you'll like it just as much as I did.

This if the first novel in a sequence of three works (I hesitate to call it a trilogy) concerned with the American underworld; the second one is called The Cold Six Thousand and the last one is Blood's a Rover. You bet that I'll be reading them, though I think I need a bit of a rest first, and perhaps a detox, too.

[Curtis Retherford · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reprehensible and inept.

The characters are almost entirely identical: They talk the same, they think the same, they all stumble through the plot in the same way: numb, cocksure, and without any discernible motivation for any of their actions. This book lacks even the cookie-cutter archetypes of a standard noir, which it so clearly wants to be. Instead, each character simply goes from crime to crime with no particular purpose. They are devoid of morals, but Ellroy has failed to give anything interesting to make up for that. They seem to care a little about money, but not particularly. Why do things happen? Who the fuck knows. Things happen, and the characters consistently pat themselves on the back for their actions, but it's all meaningless. Near the end of the book, there is a clumsy attempt at giving each of the main characters a motivation, but by that point it is so late, and so much has happened, that it no longer matters.

The plot is essentially a shaggy dog story. Alliances shift and twist, but not towards any particular goal. Characters frequently have to repeat to themselves and each other exactly what is happening, because the plot changes so often. Characters will instantly offer up indiscretions to people they have just met for the sole purpose of either re-explaining the current plot or to give another character some leverage, to force yet another shift in allegiances and power. Every plot point is cartoonish, an over-the-top attempt at shocking the reader via sex (typically homosexual sex) or violence. It quickly gets boring.

I'll give Ellroy the benefit of the doubt and assume that the narrator is not Ellroy, but simply a character whom we never meet. In that case, the narrator is a racist, homophobic, fumbling writer. Although he tries to write in a Chandler-esque hard-boiled noir style, with short, choppy sentences, he isn't an adept enough writer to pull it off. Sentences end up limp and vague, with ambiguous pronouns and misplaced modifiers littered throughout. The only reason this doesn't completely stall any forward momentum is that Ellroy tells, rather than shows. He describes little actual action, and instead has the characters tell and retell each other what has happened, or is happening.

However, even assuming the narrator is not Ellroy, there are two problems that fall purely in Ellroy's lap: the dialogue and the document inserts. Every character in this book speaks in the exact same way. The dialogue of Pete Bondurant, a gigantic French-Canadian tough, and the dialogue of Kemper Boyd, a highly educated FBI agent from Tennessee, are both interchangeable. Ellroy is obsessed with regional dialects (characters often remark on the accents or dialects of other characters), and yet Ellroy has a tin ear for human speech. The only time Ellroy changes any dialogue at all is for his Jewish characters, who throw in an absurd number of Yiddish terms into their conversations. Then, there are the document inserts: They read like more Ellroy, rather than any sort of official document.

This isn't a novel, it's a conspiracy theory, and as such it shares the problems of most conspiracy theories. It is sprawling, tying in every conceivable person in the area with no rhyme or reason. Any famous person from the late 50s and early 60s shows up here. Ellroy's favorite tactic is to name-drop a celebrity and then casually mention what sexual deviancy they were guilty of. Ellroy is obsessed with certain details, such as the makes and models of firearms, but knows nothing about the other elements, such as what happens when someone gets shot, or when a toaster is thrown into a sink, et cetera. The few action scenes in the book are therefore rushed through, with ludicrous all caps lines such as "The Molotov hit the pavement AND DID NOT SHATTER."

The book also shares the biggest problem of most conspiracy theories: a basic lack of understanding of how humans behave. It treats each person as essentially identical, a person to put in place, as if the plot were a chess puzzle, and you merely need to worry about getting each piece in the right location at the right time, and it doesn't matter how or why they got there.

This book is garbage.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compulsively readable! Ellroy's vision of the times and events surrounding the assasination of John Kennedy make it a fascinating read!

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute humdinger of a novel when it comes to American historical fiction. Ellroy takes a scalpel to the throat of late 50's/early 60s America - one of the most important in its history - and goes for jugular bigtime. The mob, the teamsters, the Kennedy's, the feds, the McClellan Committee, the CIA, undercover ops, Cuba and Castro and whole lot more are put under the microscope. With his terse sentenced stylistic prose, sharp and punchy dialogue, and characters that, while not particularly likeable - sleazy and unpleasant; brutal and womanizing; backstabbing and greedy; criminally connected and actively clandestine - were brilliantly portrayed of this era. Ellroy's world is tough and mean and doesn't know the meaning of ethical or fair. Even those trying to do good are hardly stand up model citizens. Some may have thoughts of Don DeLillo's Libra whilst reading - I personally didn't see it that way, but did get flashes of Scorsese's film The Irishman running through my mind; especially when it came to the Jimmy Hoffa angle. Dark, at times blistering intense and with a plot that thickens from single cream to clotted, I was pretty much mesmerized by the whole thing. It's a novel that made me feel exhausted without even moving. There was just so much to take in. I do like it when writers take real life figures and turn them into characters along side the fictional ones. I'd be amazed though if this novel went down a treat with most women that read it.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

An all time favourite which I am pleased to report delivered, yet again, on my latest reread (January 2026). American Tabloid (1995) is the first part of James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy and must surely rank as one of the most ambitious crime novels ever as well as an undisputed masterpiece of the secret history genre.

Set between 1958 and 1963, the novel follows three men who weave through the intersections of the FBI, the CIA, the Mob, and the Kennedy administration, and which embraces election rigging, money laundering, and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Throughout it exudes paranoia, gutter press energy, and immerses the reader in the attitudes and atmosphere of the era.

James Ellroy employes short, punchy, declarative sentences which read like a series of urgent telegrams. Despite these short sentences, the plot is dense and labyrinthine.

It is not for everyone given it is relentlessly cynical, extremely violent, and employs the often offensive vernacular of the late 50s and early 60s.

A sprawling, epic, high octane fever dream version of American history.

Essential

5/5



More about American Tabloid....

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination—in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C....

Where the CIA, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy...

Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man's loyalty...

Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history....

James Ellroy's trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he's written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.

Chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of the year.

"Hard-bitten ... ingenious ... Ellroy segues into political intrigue without missing a beat." —The New York Times

"Vastly entertaining." —Los Angeles Times

"One hellishly exciting ride." —Detroit Free Press

"A supremely controlled work of art." —The New York Times Book Review

[The Girl with the Sagittarius Tattoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to start this review with what a ride!

L.A. Confidential is one of my favorite movie dramas, but when I tried to read the L.A. Quartet, the writing was too choppy to read and I gave up quickly. This time I went into the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy on audiobook, and it was the best decision. Not only was the narrator perfect for the job, but I got the terrifically mean story without being tripped up by three-word sentences and single-page chapters.

American Tabloid is an outstanding piece of work. Ellroy weaves three fictitious, corruptible main characters into the factual whole cloth of major American historical players and events, serving us up a plausible story of how they could've all tied together.

Set between 1958-1963, the book combines John F. and Robert Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro, Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes and every mob boss at the time. MCs Kemper Boyd and Ward Littell are former FBI partners, now individually drawn into covert operations. Hoover taps Boyd to get close to the Kennedys and inform on them, while Littell is sent to investigate Hoffa and the mafia. A third man, Pete Bondurant, is a former LA cop now working with Boyd. Throughout the novel, these three work together and at odds, knowingly and unknowingly, for both their bosses and their bosses' enemies. Each has his own moral code and agenda, which makes the novel crazy complex and intriguing. Twists on top of betrayals followed by backstabbings.

Literally.

I personally loved the dark, gritty, seedy tone of the novel and I 100% think the language used was appropriate for the time. *However,* readers of a sensitive nature should give this book (and author) a hard pass. Now that I know how well Ellroy's novels translate to audiobooks, I will be giving all his novels a listen eventually. I loved this book!

[Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Supercollider Story
"In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight.
Wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh
***
Near the village, the peaceful village,
The lion sleeps tonight."
The Tokens, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, 1961



Named by Time magazine as 1995's Best Fiction, American Tabloid is the literary equivalent of "packing heat and unloading." Written in a pugnacious style I haven't really read before, the book centers on 3 men: Kemper Boyd, a philandering FBI agent recruited by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan via Bobby's efforts to prosecute Jimmy Hoffa and his mob associates; Ward Littell, an obdurate alcoholic FBI agent who's on the outs with Hoover and ultimately becomes connected with organized crime in Chicago and Howard Hughes; and, Pete Bondurant, a bad-to-the-bone heavy lifter, former law enforcement officer, who works for Hughes, Hoffa and ultimately with the CIA.


J. Edgar Hoover (in men's clothes)

The story takes place over 5 years from November 1958 through the day of Pres. Kennedy's assassination, covering shakedowns, collusions, heroin, the Bay of Pigs, numerous hits and a treasonous "contract." In addition to the H's (Hoover, Hughes and Hoffa), the novel is filled with FBI and CIA officials, anti-Castro rebels, the Hollywood crowd, CIA officials, Cuban commies and various mobsters from New York, Chicago and Miami.


Howard Hughes

Ellroy pulls no punches in this explosive novel that dashes from page 1 to its fateful finish.


Castro with Khrushchev at Kremlin, 1963

Edit: It takes a few minutes to get acclimated to Ellroy's writing style. Brash, short in-your-face paragraphs. Exhibit 1:

“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
***
The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.

Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.

They were rough cops and shakedown artists. ... wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.

It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.

Here's to them.”

[Ɗẳɳ 2.☊ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I will reluctantly post my first review here. Up to now, I've never really felt the need to do my own reviews. I'd rather leave that to the semi-professional book bloggers & "power users" out there. Who, quite frankly, are much better at it than me. Typically, once I finish a book, I merely post my take on whichever friends' reviews I happen to like the most. I also find myself skimming many long reviews so I hope to keep this short. I'll leave the synopsis for the pros. So without further ado, here's my take:

"Wow! This is a tough one to rate. I loved the beginning, but it eventually began to wear me down. The writing style is so jarring, and there is so much story here (it felt like 1000 pages crammed into 600), and some parts just didn't as interesting me. But I was way too invested in the story to throw in the towel, so I cranked up the coffee machine and fought through it. Then the strangest thing happened. When I upped my pace and quit trying to connect every tiny thread the story really took off, and the final third of the book was brilliant.

Dig that roller coaster ride. A 4-star whoosh outta the gate, lags to a 2-star middling slog, coming down the homestretch BANG 5 stars with a bullet!"

I greedily hoard my 5-star rankings for those rare books which I find little to complain about. Here the ADD writing style, overstuffed narrative, and an abundance of tedious minutiae drop this one down a bit.

Thanks to Kemper for leading me to this one: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Edward Gwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intense read but I didn't care much about the characters nor the to-and-froing of the plot.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's still bewildering that the powers that killed JFK managed to dupe history into holding one hapless individual responsible. This is a fantastic and shocking account of what Elroy describes as America's greatest crime of the 20th century. He invents three characters to interact with the cast of real characters. What we get is an America no less violent, corrupt and sinister than Putin's Russia. The mob, the CIA and the FBI often in collusion. We are shown how the Kennedy brothers eventually incur the hatred of just about every powerful man in America. It's such a good novel I didn't want it to end.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

while ellroy's chandler-on-crack routine is exhausting stylistically [mock sample excerpt: "this spic commie was a real cooze hound. dig his geeked-out arsenal: 20 30.06 shells, three silencer-rigged .45s, a rapemobile-mounted shotgun. agency/outfit sanctioned figured kemper boyd."], _american tabloid_'s dark reimagining of early-60s optimism as a cesspool of cynical political power plays underscored by mixed alliances, double- and triple-crosses, and the reduction of the era's most "powerful/influential" figures [kennedy (known as "The Haircut"), j. edgar hoover, howard hughes] to low-level pawns ruthlessly manipulated by crooked cops, mafiosa and the like is as addictive as the uncut heroin that, in ellroy's world, finances world-stage events including the bay of pigs, the kennedy assasination, etc.

think of _american tabloid_ as something like a fictional _people's history_ of 1959-1963, gore vidal on a really bad acid trip, or just what it claims to be: a tabloid rendering of critical moments in US history.

the novel is definitely a "grower," with plot intrigue overshadowing ellroy's painfully hardboiled style only after several hundred pages that establish a web of CIA/FBI/Justice Department/Mafia/Cuban alliances and counter-alliances, enabling a deeply impressive scope and ambition for _american tabloid_. regardless, one must be prepared to wade through over 500 pages of countless plot twists and one-sentence, three-word paragraphs to realize the novel's full payoff. while the tradeoff was ultimately worth it for me, i suspect others might feel differently.

[Jason Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellroy is Ellroy, and the rest of us aren’t. That’s just how it is.

Reread in 2025–

What amazes me about the Demon Dog is the relentlessness of his pacing. AT doesn’t slow down, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t give the reader a break until you arrive in Dallas on 11/22/63 knowing what’s coming. But, like Big Pete Bondurant, all you can do is brace yourself for this big fucking scream.

A brilliant fantasy of how modern America died, blasted at distance by the Mafia, the CIA, and a trio of bent cops riding hard for Cuban cash. Just a stunning achievement.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Tabloid is the kind of no-holds-barred masterpiece that makes me want to buy extra copies and foist them on everyone I know. It's a complex, tangled epic with the propulsive pacing of the best thrillers and it somehow manages to move hundreds of characters through double- and triple-alliances and betrayals without losing track of who they are, what they're doing, and what they want. It has the weight of tragedy while simultaneously being a book that calls Jack Ruby a dog-fucker. In other words, it does basically everything you can ask of a novel and then some.

Ellroy pins the rise and precipitous fall of JFK into the ground like a stake and lets the story twine around it, so while this is technically a story about everything leading up to the Kennedy assassination, it's more particularly, and movingly, the story of Kemper Boyd, Ward J. Littell, and Pete Bondurant.

Kemper Boyd is an ambitious and exceptionally charismatic FBI agent with a talent for compartmentalization, which he'll need, since he spends the majority of the novel audaciously pledging himself to the FBI, the CIA, the Kennedy family, the Mafia, the Justice Department, and his particular friends and partners, none of whom (except maybe J. Edgar Hoover) have a clear and full understand of who he's working for and what he's doing. Kemper is so charming that even guys he's arrested recommend him to potential superiors. In any other book, the near-universality of his appeal would grate, but I am just as much in love with Kemper Boyd as 99% of the characters in this novel are, so you won't hear that complaint from me. It undoubtedly helps that Ellroy sees him clearly--he's warm, friendly, and genuinely likable, but he also doesn't hesitate to cold-bloodedly use (and, well, murder) people to further his own ends when it seems necessary to him.

Ward Littell is Kemper's former partner--a nerdy, nervous kid brother of sorts who doesn't have Kemper's automatic ability to win people to his side. What he does have is a genuine and frighteningly intense commitment to uprooting the Mob and thereby becoming a man and impressing his hero Bobby Kennedy, and he becomes more and more willing to cross lines for the sake of his goal.

Big Pete Bondurant is a former LAPD officer turned Howard Hughes bagman, and he just wants to make good money, enjoy some nice weather, and have a stable relationship, which makes him as close to an Everyman as you're going to get even as he murders, blackmails, pimps, and procures dope. Pete thinks communism is "bad for business," but that lukewarm condemnation is as far as he's willing to go on an ideological front--but that doesn't stop him from getting more and more involved in American plots to deal with Fidel Castro's presence in Cuba.

By following this trio of men "riding shotgun to History," Ellroy plots a relentless, breakneck course through the Kennedy administration, with special attention on the ramp up to and down from the Bay of Pigs. Characters plot and change alliances often enough, but this isn't a simple chess game, because all the pieces have minds of their own. The emotional stakes are real even for the minor characters, who bear grudges and form loyalties just like our primaries. Characters have blind spots. People take personal, petty dislikes to each other that complicate things just as much as any piece of blackmail. People fall in love with other people and in love with ideas. They start taking drugs. They rationalize. They don't always know what everyone else is thinking, and sometimes key partners change their minds. All of this makes the novel feel more real, which makes it all the more impossible to put down, especially when things start going badly. In the novel's best moments, you're perfectly in Kemper's, Ward's, or Pete's shoes, watching in stupefied horror as a decision gets made that scuppers their plans and that they can't alter or even object to, because these guys are just high enough up to have some power and influence, but never high enough to be the real players. Mostly, when they think that, they're fooling themselves.

And that's the overall thrust of American Tabloid: history is a bloodsport that welcomes all comers. Love it if you want to, but don't ever think it loves you back.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to get hooked, and then I was hooked, and it’s an American classic. I have no idea how I wound up caring about Pete Bondurant. And Kemper Boyd. And Ward Littell. It should not be possible.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

(this was a diversion, something to transport)

Much of the GR community shares a united front on American Tabloid, comparing it to meth or serial lines of blow, Ellroy is credited with thousands of pages of plot stripped down to slide into a mere 600 page volume. There is a measure of truth in said consensus. Well some of the metaphors do work. It does often appear that an acetylene torch is applied to the reader's soul. Events do come tumbling into focus and then disappear in the span of a few pages. The historical significance trails afterward like a sonic boom. The novel's chief created characters ( as opposed to the historical personages that the author stacks to the rafters) all occupy the opaque underworld of the FBI and the Syndicates. The Mob and communist inspire night terrors. Affairs branch outward from there. No one can afford loyalty, we understand. A subplot involving the daughters of the G-men being friends is but a plot device, quickly discarded to no real effect. Many of the characters decide that they don’t hate sufficiently and question matters. I’m guessing a few readers came to the same conclusion.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the first Ellroy I've read, and it will likely be the last. Mostly because I find it impossible to take this seriously.

I don't doubt for a minute his portrayal of mobsters and G-men and teamsters run amok in the fifties and sixties; I'm sure they were just as violent and hellbent on mayhem as they're depicted here. His gloss on the Bay of Pigs jibes, too. There is one neat bit of business following a character's slow arc from soft-skinned do-gooder alcoholic into revenge-driven killer. But that character's evolution isn't near interesting enough.

More the problem is the prose, which is written in a kind of Ellroy clipart style. Every time someone in this book gets punched, that person spits out a tooth. Or swallows a tooth. Or (memorably) spits out a bit of bridgework. If some guys are going to be taken out by shooting, and there is anything combustible nearby, the bodies, the car, the trees, the prose will all be set afire. Just about every time. If someone gets cut, it is always "to the bone." Nearly six hundred pages of this tedious, repetitive twaddle. The ridiculous "hard-boiled" voice keeps the characters from ever gaining more than two-dimensions and always at arm's remove.

People love Ellroy, I get that. A friend recommended this book. But not this reader.