American Tabloid: Underworld USA (1)

Let's get one thing straight. This book is bigger than your house. Taller, wider, deeper and more powerful than anything you have beheld up to now, it takes the myth that was once 'nice' John F Kennedy, fleeces it, rips the guts out of it and blasts the remains into the gutter from where it started. This is a 600 page novel with a world-famous ending, the assassination of JFK. So you think, why should I read it? Well, it will change your knowledge (or what you had been taught) about one of the most significant periods in American History, and it will tell you things you definitely didn't know about a whole string of household names : Jack Kennedy, kid brother Robert, their seriously bad-news father 'Irish Joe' Kennedy, J.Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and a colourful list of 'made-guy' underworld gangsters such as Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli and Sam Giancana. One of the low-life gangsters featured is a certain Jack Ruby, and I think we all know what he is best known for. In fact this novel is so daringly matter-of-fact about the lives (and loves) of most of the above-named that it makes me wonder how it ever came to be published at all. And it's no over-statement to suggest that you could write a book about this book. It is, at the end of the day, a novel, which is to say a work of fiction, but I for one wanted to believe that every element of it was true because it helped me to understand so much more than I had been 'educated' to believe in the newspapers and other media down the years. But essentially American Tabloid surrounds the inter-twining lives of three men : hit-man Pete Bondurant, and two federal agents Kemper Boyd and his once protégé Ward Littell. Boyd devotes his career and in turn his life to the Kennedy cause and is nearly ruined when they ultimately turn against him. Littell dedicates his life, and takes life-threatening risks in doing so, to help expose the corruption behind the Kennedy family and the Jimmy Hoffa union rackets - and again gets trodden on by those he thinks he is working for. These two men end up in very different positions and with inverted political attitudes as a result. Meanwhile Bondurant flits between hits for Hughes, Hoffa, the FBI and the CIA and at times rightly regards himself as a CIA agent. Drugs abound, indeed heroin seems to be the leading if not traditional currency for the CIA in its financing of plans to invade Cuba and oust the new leader Fidel Castro. The time period covered is 22nd November 1958 to the same date in 1963 - the two-year run-up to the 1960 US Election and the 1000-day tenure of JFK as President until his assassination in Dallas. But if like me you've always wanted to know who shot him, why he was shot, and many other questions surrounding his brief presidency, then American Tabloid must surely be the most eye-opening source of information even if it mus

I am not going to recap the book because after 110 reviews I am sure that has been done to death. I am just going to give you my opinion on this book I read about ten years ago. When I was in college I picked up this book completely as a fluke. It looked interesting, I am big into history and the book jacket peaked my interest. From the first moment I started to read I couldn't put it down. I carried it to the kitchen five hours later while I threw together a sandwich and read while the bread toasted. I read all night and into the next day. I blew off my classes. I didn't do anything else but read. When I was done that afternoon I was not exhausted as one would think. I was exhilarated. This book is so well written, so complex, so dark, so funny, so much more than the average book I was physically excited. Over the next few months my friends read it and each one read it with the same kind of fervor I did. People who hated to read loved this book. READ IT! BUY IT! Do not hesitate. If you love a good book then you will completely flip out over this one! It is truly an amazing book and one of the best pieces of fiction ever. I cannot tell you strong enough how wonderful this treasure is for someone who loves to read. It is a perfectly written novel.

Cops act like criminals, criminals act like cops, and the twain collides and melds over and over again. There are no good guys in "American Tabloid," just guys who are mired in various levels of corruption. Ankle deep, waist deep, and in over their heads. One of the lessons James Ellroy gives us is that once you've touched your toe to the muck it will eventually suck you down. Redemption may present itself, but Ellroy's characters are so far around the bend that even good things are done for all the wrong reasons. In an introduction Mr. Ellroy tells us he's going to create the new myth of the Camelot years - the dark myth - and he succeeds admirably.In the tautest prose between covers we follow a handful of near and complete psychopaths as their lives intersect through John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and his 1000 day reign. Big shots and underlings alike. Their machinations are complex, and almost always involve extortion, but solutions are often simple - a beating for a lesson, a bullet to the head for the more recalcitrant. But why stop there when torture, and dismemberment are so fulfilling. The lead characters suffer, but except for one ex-Jesuit seminarian become FBI agent, become mob lawyer, the suffering is physical rather than existential, and it's so much easier to deal with a migraine than a crisis of conscience."American Tabloid," for all the horror contained therein, is one of the best books I've read in the past five years. It's right up there with Cormack McCarthy's "Border Trilogy," but where McCarthy can go sentimental, James Ellroy never lets up.

It's weird knowing of James Ellroy and not reading any of his books. I had loved the film version of "L.A. Confidential", but for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to pick up some of his material. Whatever the reason, some time ago, I picked up "American Tabloid" and basically didn't put it down until I got to the last page. It's a great book about the strange events that made up the late 50's and early 60's, weaved around a fictional story of corrupt men and the even worse men that pay their bills. The fact that this mucks around in almost "sacred cow" events (the Bay of Pigs, JFK's assassination) doesn't even matter. This is a crime drama that just happens to have famous people as the supporting cast. It's truly one of the last great crime books of the last decade.

James Ellroy writes "hard boiled" fiction. If you hard boil an egg for about a week,perhaps. Ellroy inhabits a world all his own in crime literature. Having somehow survived a childhood from dantes seventh circle, he grew up to write these angry books where the bad guys are powerful white men{thinking of inherent power structures, he's quite correct}.American tabloid tells the story ,in all its vainglorious insanity, of that sweet time in Americana called "Camelot". This riveting novel actually is a meditation on power, who has it, and what it does. Betrayal{Bay of Pigs, Kennedy blowing off a CIA agent, everybody BUT the Kennedy's racking Marilyn Monoroe, J edgar Hoover, Joe Kennedy, Howard Hughes} all amke appearances leading to Dealy Plaza. s always, Ellroys descriptive powers are unmatched in describing viloence{the Cuban cab front company has some interesting moments}, and no one, no one, comes off as good in this. A profoundly disturbing book, a meditation on power, America, and who really runs things.One of our better writers in any genre has written another would be classic. Very very well done . Highest recommendation.