American Tabloid book cover by James Ellroy

American Tabloid

Adult • Mystery • Thriller & Suspense • Thriller • Suspense
Book Available now

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 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. . . .

James Ellroy's trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he's written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.

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Edition information

Book details

Publisher
Vintage
Publication date
2001
Print length
592 pages
ISBN
9780375727375

Mystery + Thriller & Suspense + Thriller

Reader guide

What to Know Before Reading American Tabloid

A fast-paced, hyper-stylized historical crime novel that explores the dark, corrupt underbelly of American politics between 1958 and 1963. The narrative weaves a fictional conspiracy into the real-life history leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Written in Ellroy’s signature lean, staccato prose, the book strips away historical nostalgia to portray the era as a brutal clash of competing power players, including the Mob, the FBI, the CIA, and corrupt politicians.

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Why readers connect with American Tabloid

A concise view of the book’s strongest literary signals and the reading interests shared by people connected to it on bks.social.

Reader connection

Readers connected to this book most often reflect Psychological Moral Explorer reader archetypes. Their strongest shared genre interests include Crime, Mystery, Thriller, and Literary Fiction. They are commonly drawn to themes such as Psychological Moral Explorer, Exploring Justice And Consequence, Seeking Dark Psychological Tension, and Exploring The Fractured Self.

About the author

James Ellroy

James Ellroy

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed L.A. Qurtet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover. He is the author of one work of non-fiction, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.

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