- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd; New edition edition (7 Sep 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099893207
- ISBN-13: 978-0099893202
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 91,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
American Tabloid
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More About the Author
Product Description
Savkar Altinel, Sunday Telegraph
'Intense and flamboyant . . . excellent. . . one emerges breathless, shaken and ready to change one's view of recent American history'
Marcel Berlins, Times
'Brilliant and appalling. It is deeply repelling portraiture, yet mesmerising'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
much to admire in this extraordinary book but little to like,
By callery@tesco.net (Glasgow Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: American Tabloid (Paperback)
Reading this book is a little like enduring some particular -if temporary - form of mental illness. It is trip inside the lives of a variety of characters -both real and imagined-who are connected by strings of violence and puddles of loathing. There is an almost total absence of those virtues that feature so highly in the mythology of America - truth, honour, fair play and personal integrity. Even within the writer himself you sense the same darkness and the same anger that drives so many of the characters of this novel. Ellroy also takes us deep inside Washington and provides an arena for the politicians to reveal themselves - naked and disgraced - as the real gangsters, the real torcholders of self serving viciousness, double dealing and the American Way. There is something dark-really dark- in James Ellroys writing and in the man himself. There is little to lift us and give us hope for the species. You are left feeling that lunch with James Ellroy might turn out to be a heavy meal. Ultimately, however, this book is a great triumph because it leaves you certain that even if all as it is described is not entirely all as it happened it does not matter. For those parts that might not be entirely true convince as being absolutely real! What is revealed in this book is neither lovely nor good but it emerges from any careful reading triumphant because of the power and the quality of the writing which left me believing absolutely that these characters and the edgy affluent and violent events they moved through ultimately consumed them and corrupted them completely. This was no golden age - this was no Camelot and these were not chivarous men. Thankfully we now live in better more accountable times - don't we? This remains for me an extraordinary well written book teeling a story that may or may not contain any historical accuracy but it is a book which wonderfully evokes a time and place more successfully than we could really expect. A wonderful book and -in my view- the finest work -so far - of the finest crime writer working in America to-day and a crime writer only rivalled by the great Jim Thomson as the finest of the century. READ THIS BOOK
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A True Modern Classic,
By Stefan (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: American Tabloid (Paperback)
If ytou have any interest at all in crime writing or the America of the 1950's and 60's you have to read this book. I read the Black Dahlia several years ago and enjoyed it, but it was, in my opinion, nothing compared to this. I truly believe this to be amnong the very best (if not THE best)fiction I have read. And I have read a couple of books a month for many years. A superbly dark, shocking, intriguing novel. The manner in which the author binds together real historical characters with fictional ones, real documented events with invented, and real relationships and conversations with new is truly stunning
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
HISTORY WITH BODILY FLUIDS - AND NOIR STYLE!,
By
This review is from: American Tabloid (Mass Market Paperback)
History has always been written by the victors - and they have the tendency to iron-out all its bloody details and hide all their dirty secrets. This a TRUE CLASSIC: imagine a history book that reads like a tabloid. Every story up close and personal, complete with every gory detail described. IN CINEMASCOPE & TECHNICOLOR.
The dirty making of the Kennedy fortune. Hoover as a hypochondriac cross-dressing extortionist. Everybody wiretapping everybody. The Camelot President clocked at 6 minutes. The Mob rigs the election for said President; invades Cuba with clansmen and Castro's exiles in blood-lust frenzy; gets burned - and gets even the only way it knows how. And in the middle of it all, two FBI agents trapped in a downwards spiral of serving multiple masters. JAMES ELLROY does not pretend to write the dark side: he has barely escaped it himself and knows all its intoxicating scents and shadows. Read for the plausible details of history's margins. Enjoy the staccato prose of natural wit, verbatim FBI communication files and 50's Tabloid lingo. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
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