Blood's A Rover: Underworld USA 3

1st part of the trilogy was the one-thousand days's rush that led to JFK's skull explosion. 2nd part was focused on his brother and M.L.King. This final part, 15 years after the first one (I don't think I ever waited for a book that long) covers the 1968 to 1972 era, Hawaii and the Dominican Republic, the black panthers, communism, all of this, as usual now, overshadowed by Hoover, the maffia, Howard Hughes, and the whole Ellroy conspiracy gang (but I badly missed Pete Bondurant) It's fast, uberviolent, dostoievskian, tres complex, it's still about the times when America lost its innocence - if there ever was one - it's about redemption and closure and as usual with Ellroy, it's about "cherchez la femme", women, who, for the 1st time are not only second role lovers but also puppet masters of those violent men "that defined their era". Ellroy writing love letters ? Yes, in his own dark way. It depicts the best female character in Ellroy's work ever. It also is arguably the best (crime) novel I've ever read. One of those books that sadly make you wonder what to read next since everything will taste like papier-mâché after that. Deserves a 6 stars option. Buy the blip thing without a single second thought. What is Ellroy gonna do to top this ?

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, America is a lie, wrapped up in a deception, inside a thin shell of morality. And James Ellroy keeps taping that shell, testing for weak-points and showing us it is hollow. Do you have the stomach to see what they have been feeding us all this time? DIG IT: any bootlegger's son can become the President - assassination will automatically activate sanctification. Organized crime does not exist - but that never stopped it from running the country. And elections are not easy to fix - but in any case easier to fix than the World Series. DOCUMENT INSERT: the most powerful man fighting Communism is a cross-dressing director with a wiretap fetish - morality standards and irony galore. Dominican Republic is the new location-location-location for blackjack-tables and chorus-line girls - if el Jefe can voodoo-hex the slaves from revolting. And Tricky Dick's price is 5 million - uncontrolled scatology at no extra charge. CAREFUL NOW: infiltrate means collaborate; collaborate means condone; condone means finance; finance means plan; plan means precipitate - at which point did the investigation turn into instigation? This is the third installment of the American-Underbelly trilogy (the masterpiece American Tabloid being the first and the excellent The Cold Six Thousand being the second). One does not necessarily have to read them in succession - but it surely helps. This is not an easy read, the story will serpent back and eat any one of its multiple tails, more than once. A second reading is recommended. And it will up the pixel-count of the images projected. In CinemaScope and Technicolor. As the trilogy goes, this is the weakest of the three books, mostly because Ellroy hesitated in taking up major players with his brush painting the picture. Hoover and Nixon make cameo appearances - and sprinkles cannot be as filling as a square meal. I also missed the cool tabloid excerpts. The story is dark enough, some direct humor (even of the hush-hush kind) could be used. Other than that, expect the familiar hard-boiled noir story. Where men are complicated and cruel yet witty and dames are desirable and decisive yet in constant distress. And no one is innocent. There be time enough to sleep. For now, let James tell you (almost) everything. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

James Ellroy provokes a strong reaction in readers. You either love him or hate him. If you've never read Ellroy before, this isn't the best place to start. It's the last installment of what he has called his, "Underworld Trilogy". Best to begin with LA Confidential or Black Dahlia, then hit American Tabloid for the roots of the saga. Glancing through the 1-2 star reviews, again, Ellroy's style is not for everyone. If Robert Ludlum or James Michener rocks your world---this may not be the writer for you. If you demand closure, Ellroy is not your guy. That said, even those among my acquaintance who don't dig his style recognize he is a skilled & gifted writer. I happen to dig Ellroy's style. I've read everything he's published. He's one of the few contemporary fiction writers in his genre who have been consistently rewarding in my experience. I don't often re-read authors but have found Ellroy compelling enough to give him a 2nd go. Every time, the 2nd read has been more rewarding than the 1st. So yeah, I'm a big fan. Blunt, fast paced telepathic style...Intricate plotting...Merciless "Pull-the-rug- from-under" twists... It all moves forward from The Cold Six Thousand. The conflicted Wayne Tedrow is back along with the conniving Dwight C. Holly. The novice Private eye & low rent peeper, Don Crutchfield is a welcome addition to the fray, as is Marsh Bowen, an African American former cop set adrift as an undercover operator in the stormy seas of post Civil Rights strife. Ellroy's female characters also take center stage after being somewhat consigned to the periphery, including the "Red Goddess", Joan Rosen Klein. Ellroy may not be breaking new ground in terms of the world he creates but he's certainly dragging us under and out to the fringes. The bottom line behind all the madness & mayhem unleashed herein: HATE SUCKS Read the book if you relate.

First off, I'll admit some bias here. I'm a big Ellroy fan, and American Tabloid is neck-and-neck with Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities for my favourite novel of all time. There appear to be a couple of Ellroy haters among the reviewers so far, and fair enough, he's a love-or-hate writer. If you don't like Ellroy, you won't like Blood's a Rover. If, like me, you do like Ellroy, then this book will fulfil yet confound your every expectation. I won't bother with outlining the plot other than to say it's as tangled and propulsive as you'd expect from Ellroy. What some may want to know is how it compares to American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand. It's probably closer in tone to the former, lacking the latter's highly stylised presentation. It's a smoother read, in other words, but still requires some investment on the reader's part. That investment is rewarded many times over, however, and things barrel along at a wonderful page-turning rate. There are two main distinctions between this and Ellroy's earlier work. The first is his portrayal of women. While there are some recognisable tics, such as the younger male characters' borderline oedipal fixations on older women, and a tendency for those same women to be physically or pschologically scarred, Ellroy this time gives his female characters more room to breathe and develop. They are more than objects of obsession there to torture the male characters. The other difference is the heart of the piece; one could argue Ellroy's work perhaps lacked emotional depth, but not so with Blood's a Rover. Oddly for an author of his vintage, this is perhaps the most mature book of his career. It's also his most personal novel since The Black Dahlia. One character, Don Crutchfield, is ostensibly based on a real life private eye still alive and working today, but the character on the page is clearly based on Ellroy's young self. The book may also leave you questioning your idea of the author's politics. He has wilfully played up his right wing public persona, but the politics of Blood's a Rover (and when looking at the trilogy as a whole) skew left of centre. Some might accuse Ellroy of putting style over substance, but one aspect of this novel clearly illustrates his skill as a straight-up storyteller. It's when he starts playing with your expectations of the book, turning the story on its head so that you can't even take the narrative itself at face value, that you realise why he is the greatest living crime writer. It's virtuoso stuff. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of this book back in April, and it has stuck with me since then. It's a brilliant conclusion to the Underworld USA trilogy, and any Ellroy fan will be seduced once again by the master of the hard word.

In 1964 in Los Angeles, a Well Fargo armored car is shockingly robbed. By 1968 Howard "Dracula" Hughes moves in on the Vegas Strip with help from voodoo medicine and the mob. The same group behind the killings of Kennedy and King creates havoc in Chicago as Nixon must be elected president because the mob and J. Edgar Hoover know Tricky Dick is one of them, albeit a moronic one. The Mafia sets up casinos in the Dominican Republic to replace Havana with an advanced party Mesplede (of Grassy Knoll notoriety) and Tredow running heroin from Haiti to raise money for assaults on Cuba. The FBI's "Old Girl" knows Nixon will endorse spying, jailing and assassinating anti Vietnam rabbles, Black Militants like King, and women libber communists under the American dream BS. The government-mobster-industrial complex easily prevents leftists like Karen Sifakis and Joan Rosen Klein from power through betrayal, back stabbing and legal robbery with the only cost being the democratic dumbing down of the masses. All those who actively rule pretend to be honorable with blood on the hands delegated to do those who do dirty jobs. In this mire of self righteousness FBI Agent Dwight Holly has an agenda radically different from either woman he manipulates. Yet the convergence of American apple pie at the earth mother Saint Joan began in 1964 when a milk truck accidentally rammed a Well Fargo armored car; although some might argue her roots are her communist ancestors. The cynical final "Underworld USA" saga (see AMERICAN TABLOID and THE COLD SIX THOUSAND) comes full circle as the right wing real heroes (though hidden away in the closet as Reagan is more acceptable in public) Nixon, Hoover and Hughes seek salvation the American way: use chaos theory to manipulate the media and the public. The exciting story line is like the DNA matrix as subplots intertwine around one another leading to some repetitiveness when they conjoin, but impossible not to read as it has a tabloid exposing feel. American history comes alive with this fictional account of the Nixon-Hoover era as the shortest point between the back streets of L.A. and the White House run through Chicago, Vegas, Havana, and Hispaniola. Harriet Klausner