LA's Reviews > American Tabloid
American Tabloid (Underworld USA #1)
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LA's review
bookshelves: reading-sanctuary-club
Apr 11, 2018
bookshelves: reading-sanctuary-club
Read 2 times. Last read March 19, 2018 to April 11, 2018.
This is a LONG read, loaded with umpteen characters and written in choppy, gumshoe detective language. The basic run down -this is a chronologically presented story of three characters who played a role in the eventual assassination of JFK.
My curiosity about Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes, J Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, the Cubans, and the government are what kept me reading, but the language and content was very much a throwback (read offensive). Here were lots of babes and their booberage, very violent murders, sex acts staged and secretly taped, derogatory terms for any minority you can think of, and JFK acting like a complete sex addict. Jimmy Hoffa, we learned, liked to slaughter sharks with a machine gun, reserving a baseball bat with spikes for close-up work. Howard Hughes was an incredible dope fiend who hated the Kennedys. Old Joe Kennedy, the former bootlegger, was involved in highly illegal dealings which ripped off working class families but made him a bundle - all while his sons were in DC.
The brick-hard tone and chipped little sentences are exactly in the style of writing in old tabloid newspapers in the late 50s and early 60s - the book feels authentic, but I confess to feeling frustrated during the middle section of this big thing.
If you like JFK conspiracy tales and can handle this very old fashioned noir language AND the book's length, go for it. Ellroy also wrote The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential, o if you enjoyed the movie adaptations, this too might be up your alley. My enjoyment was a 3.5 but will bump to 4 just for the style.
My curiosity about Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes, J Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, the Cubans, and the government are what kept me reading, but the language and content was very much a throwback (read offensive). Here were lots of babes and their booberage, very violent murders, sex acts staged and secretly taped, derogatory terms for any minority you can think of, and JFK acting like a complete sex addict. Jimmy Hoffa, we learned, liked to slaughter sharks with a machine gun, reserving a baseball bat with spikes for close-up work. Howard Hughes was an incredible dope fiend who hated the Kennedys. Old Joe Kennedy, the former bootlegger, was involved in highly illegal dealings which ripped off working class families but made him a bundle - all while his sons were in DC.
The brick-hard tone and chipped little sentences are exactly in the style of writing in old tabloid newspapers in the late 50s and early 60s - the book feels authentic, but I confess to feeling frustrated during the middle section of this big thing.
If you like JFK conspiracy tales and can handle this very old fashioned noir language AND the book's length, go for it. Ellroy also wrote The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential, o if you enjoyed the movie adaptations, this too might be up your alley. My enjoyment was a 3.5 but will bump to 4 just for the style.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
March 7, 2018
– Shelved
March 7, 2018
– Shelved as:
to-read
March 8, 2018
– Shelved as:
reading-sanctuary-club
March 19, 2018
–
Started Reading
April 11, 2018
–
Finished Reading
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message 1:
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Glenn
(new)
Apr 11, 2018 08:55PM
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![LA](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1514579326p1/7862560.jpg)
![LA](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1514579326p1/7862560.jpg)
..and likewise to your review! I saw that it was one of the first you'd jotted, and probably like you, my 'motives' for giving various books a star rating were initially so the algorithm could give me smarter recommendations based on my favorites shelf.
Since then, I've started to think about our now 15 year old son who loves to read. Who knows if this site will be around 5 years from now, but if so and he begins reading some of the books I've reviewed, it might be fun for him to see his old mom's thoughts, blasting out of the past.
Your review was excellent - please keep writing them!
![Ɗẳɳ 2.☊](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1718649427p1/12058788.jpg)
That would be a fun to find out what your son thinks of your old reviews one day. I starting writing all mine in Word to make sure that I had a copy if worst comes to worst.
this review is as amazing as bat boy.