Featured Reading Guide
James Ellroy
1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age – an age that will last until the 1000 days of John F Kennedy’s presidency. Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Peter Bondurant – Howard Hughes’s right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa’s hitman. Kemper Boyd – employed by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell, a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy’s drive against organised crime. The festering discount of the age that burns brightly in these men’s hearts will go into supernova as the Bay of Pigs ends in calamity…
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James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed LA Quartet , The Black Dahlia , The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz , as well as the first two parts of his Underworld USA trilogy, American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand which were both Sunday Times bestsellers.
topAbout the Book
1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age – an age that will last until the 1000 days of John F Kennedy’s presidency. Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Peter Bondurant – Howard Hughes’s right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa’s hitman. Kemper Boyd – employed by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell, a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy’s drive against organised crime. The festering discount of the age that burns brightly in these men’s hearts will go into supernova as the Bay of Pigs ends in calamity, the Mob clamous for payback and the 1000 days ends in brutal quietus in 1963.
topJames Ellroy interview/review
Melody Maker, February 1995
“I like telling a good, hard story. I like a profound and complex story, and I love going further than anybody’s gone before.”
“Bobby Kennedy I’m very fond of. I think he was truly moralistic in the best sense of the word. And, if you were to ask me who killed John Kennedy, I’d say his father. Because it was Bobby Kennedy’s vendetta against organised crime that more than anything else got his brother killed.
We’ve come to accept more and more that it was the Mob who killed Kennedy, with that Cuban influence in there. And I think Bobby prosecuted the Mob with the fervour that he did because he wanted to go after the men who most morally resembled his father.It’s immensely satisfying to be able to re-write history to my own specifications.
It’s like being able to go back to your own past and being able to explicate it at will – yeah, to be able to wrap up something and turn it into something that is controlled and contained within a novel. It’s always amazing to me that my books will live on after I die and be assessed in ways that I could never assess; that’s sorta haunting and almost spiritual, and I truly love it. I always sensed history going on outside me. It was always history that interested me, and history that bored me – and now looking back, I can realise that I can continually re-invent it and somehow explore my own past.”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- Ellroy seeks to expose the golden age of Camelot as a myth, portraying corruption as endemic in the American political system. Is this just historical revisionism or a darkly truthful re-writing of 1960s America?
- Kemper Boyd ends up working for the FBI, the CIA, the Mob and the Kennedy brothers. What effects does this constant juggling of roles have on his disintegration as a character?
- There is an enduring fascination with who assassinated John F. Kennedy, and why. How plausible do you find Ellroy’s account and why do you think this moment of history still retains such a hold on people?
- Ellroy portrays many real life characters in this novel: the Kennedys, Hoover and Hoffa, amongst others. How effective do you find this mix of fictional
and factional?
- Ward Littell is transformed from an idealistic supporter of Bobby Kennedy into a powerful and sinister mob lawyer. Do you see this as a damaging loss of moral probity or simply an inevitable side-effect of power and politics?
- A major theme running through American Tabloid is power and its misuse. Do you think that is it possible for power to be used in positive ways or does its very nature make it a corrupting influence?
Other Books by James Ellroy
American Tabloid
1958 -America is about to emerge into a bright new age – an age that will last…
Blood On The Moon
Somewhere out there is a murderer with over twenty killings to his name – each…
Blood’s A Rover
It s 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are dead. The Mob, Howard H…
Brown’s Requiem
Los Angeles – Fritz Brown, ex-alcoholic private eye with a stained past, makes…
Clandestine
Set in 1950s L A CLANDESTINE follows Frederick Underhill of the Los Angeles …
Crime Wave
James Ellroy is a unique and powerful writer with a tough and explosive voice…
Destination: Morgue
Destination Morgue is James Ellroy’s first book since the bestselling The Cold…
Suggested Further Reading
- The Big Sleep ~ Raymond Chandeler
- The Neon Rain ~ James Lee Burke
- No Safe Place ~ Richard North Patterson
- California Fire and Life ~ Don Winslow
- Dirty White Boys ~ Stephen Hunter
- Killshot ~ Elmore Leonard