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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
They'll be talking about this book 500 years from now, 2 Aug 2005
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 must presumably have its inaccuracies. The writing style may not be to everyone's taste (although I quickly became accustomed to it), but if you're only half interested in What Really Happened to JFK (and the Bay of Pigs disaster), you really must read American Tabloid. It truly is a revelation. And if you love this, the great news is that you can then read The Cold Six Thousand, which is as instant a sequel as you could ask for, as it begins on the day of the John F Kennedy assassination and leads up to the killing of baby brother Bobby. Be in no doubt - James Ellroy stands tall among all peers and is, in my considered view, one of the very best writers alive today.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
The Cold Six Hundred (Pages), 8 Dec 2002
As crime fiction goes, the pedigree of American Tabloid (and James Ellroy generally) should be clear just from reading the reviews below. One even beats the back-cover reviewers at their own game, calling Ellroy "Baudelaire on Benzedrine" (which for my money far outranks the Time Out quote referring to him as a "Tinseltown Dostoevsky." Please allow me to jump on the bandwagon myself and say that, to me, Ellroy had all the qualities of Titchmarsh on Temazepam).Indeed I have no idea why American Tabloid is filed under Crime, except that that's where Ellroy's earlier novels most neatly fit. This is not a crime novel with a bad guy and a good guy and a crime at the start and a resolution at the end: this is a novel with hundreds of bad guys and some so-so guys and a bloody great crime right at the end: imminent, in fact, and offscreen. The crime is of course the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and in American Tabloid Ellroy sets out to offer up his own explanation, building in the usual suspects (Howard Hughes, Hoover, Hoffa and the Teamsters, Castro, the Mafia syndicates of Sam Giancana) all bound together with three fictional characters. Pete Bondurant is a hitman and hood working for Howard Hughes and Jimmy Hoffa; Kemper Boyd is an FBI car thief-ringer who gets sent by J Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy brothers' investigations into organised crime (Hoover believes that as the Mafia cannot be prosecuted, they should be left well alone); and Ward Littell is another FBI man, a mousy loser who sees Kemper Boyd as his mentor and wants to make a man out of himself. These three men and their internecine crosscut of jobs and favours and "shakedowns" are instrumental in bringing about the death of "Bad-Back Jack." What works about American Tabloid is the staccato prose which goes well with the scattergun violence and entirely amoral narrative. Sentences are rarely more than a line long, paragraphs rarely more than three lines. There are some blisteringly effective sentences which, more stiletto than stacatto, slip in almost unnoticed until you go back and see how much has been said in so few words. It works because the language is so compressed that it's almost in code, plain and unadorned but requiring full attention all the time. Ellroy combines his qualities in neat chapter openings. "He always shot up by TV light." "The amp made small talk boom." "Darleen Shoftel faked a mean climax." What doesn't work so well is following the damn thing. The tendency to avoid explicit motive (when it's not fear or money, which it is 98% of the time) and have a hundred things happening on every page means that short of keeping crib notes, it's almost impossible to remember everyone's precise allegiances at any one time. Why does Littell hate the Kennedys again? So who's actually doing the hit now that the Mob have called it off? You tell me. There's also a feeling that all of the shakedowns and the bribes and the plots work too neatly for the three protagonists: there's never a sense that the whole thing might go off the rails for them, although perhaps that's the point, since Ellroy is presenting all this as a fait accompli. Nonetheless I enjoyed American Tabloid's high octane delivery and for a six hundred page book it really did fly in. It's not altogether clear where the sequel, The Cold Six Thousand, will take us - where do you go from the murder of JFK? - but I suspect that I will be finding out before long.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A True Modern Classic, 19 Jan 2005
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
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Uncompromising, but moves beyond just being a crime novel, 25 April 2001
Sacriligeous I know, but is this actually a better novel than LA Confidential? The characters aren't perhaps as engaging - none have Bud White's gentleness and rage mixture, but boy does Ellroy put them through the wringer. The key word in the book belongs to Kemper Boyd 'compartmentalisation' - the lead character Kemper ends up working for the FBI, the CIA, Jack Kennedy, the mob, the Cuban resistance force and most of all himself- constantly juggling competing interests. Big Peter Bondurant, wrists so thick he can snap handcuffs starts out as a deeply unpleasant character, the rough to Kemper's smooth, but is the character who undergoes most transition. Littell Ward, attorney who hero worships Kemper and Bobby Kennedy begins as a wet, idealistic man who becomes something altogether more dark and powerful. The book is basically a rewrite of American history, compelling and believable. Ellroy says to himself, what if three men were responsible for some of the biggest drama in American history ? And what's more, that they didn't do it out of any grand design, but just as solutions to holes they had dug themselves into. It definitely needs a second reading, whereupon the book comes alive. It would be tough to call between this and LA Confidential - but nobody with an interest in fiction need choose between, read both and decide for yourself...
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
much to admire in this extraordinary book but little to like, 23 April 2001
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
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
The Great American Novel, 14 Jun 2006
If there is a recent candidate, then this is the one. Ellroy's style in this is by far superior to what he was trying to do in White Jazz, where the brevity was stiltedly relentless. Here, the sentences are longer - just enough so. The point is that the style suits the material absolutely perfect.
This is a great novel also in content. So you thought you knew what happened on November 22nd? Well, you did. What you could not know, however, is HOW it got to be like that and with WHOM. Far more horrific then any one of us could have possibly imagined...
This is a great novel not only because of style and content but also because of characterisation. You could say it is because the characters are so horrible they need no introduction or writing up, but I would suggest it is because Ellroy has got inside his subject and writing out toward us - no mean feat when you consider the enormity of his subject matter.
Let me put it this way: forget all your prissy Booker what's it contentenders and winners - this is the real deal.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Ellroy outdoes the competition - himself., 30 Jul 2002
I started this minutes after finishing the LA Noir series, which I felt was better even than the LA Quartet. This blows all of them away. This is big, ambitious stuff. If you thought LA Confidential or The Big Nowhere was large in sweep, this'll blow you away.
Ellroy's plotting is ferociously complex, and you might need to keep a cheat sheet to tell all the players and their nicknames, but it is the work of a man at the top of his game. He takes old favourites - Howard Hughes and his slimy crew, Hoover and the Mob and adds them to a lethal cocktail of the Kennedys, Cuba and Chicago crime. Halfway through, you've gotten so used to the speech patterns and Ellroy's quick-cut style that normal conversation might elude you for a few minutes.
Ellroy knows he's in superb form, and this is white-hot stuff. He's staking a strong claim to be not just the best American crime novelist alive, but among the best novelists, period.
Can't wait for The Cold Six Thousand, which pretty much takes up the characters and action where this leaves off.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
The Daily Mail this ain't......, 5 April 1999
By A Customer
One of the most violently amoral stories one can ever imagine being written, and perhaps for exactly the same reasons, one of the most gripping. From the opening three chapters, in which the three main protagonists of the book are introduced, to the last, Ellroy has created an wildly diverse mix of fictional and factual characters, joined together through a web more complex than even the most paranoid conspiracy-theorist's dreams. The usual suspects are all here - CIA, FBI, Cuban insurgents, the Mob - along with many historical figures. Many will wonder quite how justified Ellroy is in his characterisation of such figures as the Kennedy brothers, J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes, but the effect is quite startling. For fans of other Ellroy books, this will simply confirm his place as one of the most vivid of all American writers; for newcomers, a certain caution is advised, as this is a writer who pulls no punches on his audience.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
fabulous introduction, 24 Nov 2004
like my above title states i found American Tabloid a fabulous way to introduce myself to the literary world of James Ellroy.The manner in which he portrays such a fascinatingly intense era brimming with high drama and using all the main players that made up the USA at that time made for very compelling reading indeed.I now have The Cold Six Thousand at the ready and i anticipate another couple of weeks of reading into the small hours if AT is anything to go by(the fact that it is indicated to be even better has me positively salivating)
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
The 1000 days of Camelot as a vision of Babel, 14 Jun 2001
By A Customer
This is quite simply the best novel about the Kennedy period ever written.I disagree with certain areas (for example Bobby was much, much, tougher than he's portrayed) but not the central themes, and I admire and am awestruck by the style, and Ellroy's deft handling of the real and the fictional. Yes, the portraits of Kennedy, Hoffa, etc are convincing, but perhaps more impressive is the way the less well known figures such as Tippit, Banister and Marcello are presented. An astonishing fact is that, big, brutal and vicious as this book is, there are some belly laughs; The mixed biblical metaphors of Hoffa when complaining about the Kennedys "Like they brought the...ten commandments down from...Mount Vesuvius" only to be told by a Mafia boss "It's not Mount Vesuvius. Mount Vesuvius is in Yellowstone Park" Priceless patter. A writer at the peak of his range and ability, a peak above many of his contemporaries in this field.
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