Books › American Tabloid
American Tabloid
813 pages
A blistering, blood-soaked joyride through the dark, corrupt underbelly of 1960s American history.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like being strapped to a runaway freight train barreling through the darkest, sleaziest corridors of American history. The prose is famously staccato and telegraphic, hitting the reader with the relentless rhythm of a jackhammer. It is an aggressively cynical, pitch-black experience that strips away the sanitized mythology of the 1960s to reveal a paranoiac underworld of mobsters, rogue agents, and corrupt politicians. The atmosphere is suffocatingly gritty, drenched in cigarette smoke, cheap bourbon, and blood. There are no heroes here, only varying degrees of monsters driven by greed and toxic ambition. It will absolutely delight readers who crave uncompromising, hardboiled noir and want to be immersed in a brilliantly orchestrated, dread-soaked conspiracy.
- Mood
- paranoiac
- sleazy
- dread-soaked
- gritty
- Tone
- cynical
- blistering
- profane
- hardboiled
- relentless
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- the rot of the American Dream · institutional corruption · toxic ambition · historical disillusionment
- The writing
- Staccato, telegraphic, and aggressively hardboiled, built on short, punchy sentences that hit like a jackhammer.
- The arc
- Begins with cynical opportunism and accelerates into a chaotic, blood-soaked nightmare of historical inevitability.
- Who it's for
- Fans of uncompromising, pitch-black noir who want to see the sanitized myths of American history violently dismantled.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- extreme profanity
- historical racism and slurs
- drug abuse
- sexual violence
- political assassinations
About the book
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 money, power, influence and even the Presidency of the United States are up for grabs... 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...
The same blistering language, relentless narrative pace and nothing-spared rendering of reality that have marked James Ellroy's other best-selling novels are here once again, and in electrifying abundance. And now he puts them to work in a novel more shocking and daring than anything he's written before: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.
Description from Open Library.
Books like American Tabloid
See why they match
The Cold Six ThousandJames EllroyA feverish, machine-gun descent into the darkest, bloodiest conspiracies of the 1960s American underbelly.
L.A. ConfidentialJames EllroyA relentless, staccato plunge into a neon-lit, blood-soaked underbelly where everyone is guilty of something.
JFK and the unspeakableJames W. DouglassA methodical, dread-inducing descent into the shadows of the Cold War military-industrial complex and the tragic cost of pursuing peace.
The Long GoodbyeRaymond ChandlerA smoke-ringed, whiskey-soaked meditation on loyalty and betrayal in a corrupt, sun-bleached city.
LibraDon DeLilloA chilling, hypnotic descent into the shadowy mechanics of history and the paranoid heart of the American dream.
The Last DonMario PuzoA sprawling, cinematic saga where the glittering worlds of Hollywood and Las Vegas mask the ruthless, blood-soaked reality of family business.