sxk's review against another edition
5.0
Enjoying this one immensely so far. It's got the same grit as LA Confidential but the way it weaves into the Kennedys, Hollywood, Hoffa, Cuba, Hoover, the Mob, and hey, why not throw in Howard Hughes while we're at it, makes the scope of L.A. Confidential feel downright parochial in comparison. It does feel somewhat unbelievable at times the way every single character has not so much a dark side, but an absolute scumbag side at times, but it's enjoyable even if the conscience revolts.
jdcorley's review against another edition
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
You can see The Black Dahlia as the hinge point for Ellroy - you can follow him into the more conventional, Manichean cop stories, dark and exciting but suffused with good versus evil...or you can enter the Underworld USA series. American Tabloid is an unflinching, completely brutal and repellent in-your-face mission statement for the series, portraying midcentury America as a horror show of racism, corruption, hate, bigotry, antisemitism, and oligarchy. Thoroughly rooted in a history that's frantically being suppressed (this is not to say it's a true story, or that the conspiracies depicted are real, but simply that America is desperate to scream that it was never as bad as it was), it is the world, not the awful, broken characters violently staggering across it, that draws the reader in and drowns them. Ideology is for chumps, patriotism is stupid. America's an irredeemable wasteland of human garbage strangling each other to get ahead. As the underrated film Killing Them Softly would eventually summarize: "In America you're on your own." It's a lonely, cold vicious book, and in the last moment you realize everything that's coming after in a way you can't get from a history book. Beautiful, sickening, there's nothing like it.
baxtervallens's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
mothgoth's review against another edition
2.5
Wow, what a tough book to get through. A lot of it was not for me, but I ended up enjoying some things around the end! I just never really wanted to pick it up, and the slurs got to be a bit too much for me.
I love stories set around the cold war, and specifically those relating to the cuban revolution (something I have not read much about in fiction), so there were aspects of this I really enjoyed (particularly laughing at all the characters who thought castro would be assassinated "soon", knowing that he survives over 600 attempts on his life) and there seemed to be a criticism of american imperialism and certainly the fbi/cia/government that I appreciated. But dang it was hard reading this from the perspective of three of the most unlikable main characters ever LOL.
I read this for a book club and I'm glad I did, it brought out a lot of good discussions and introduced me to a level of subject matter that I wouldn't have thought to check out on my own!
I love stories set around the cold war, and specifically those relating to the cuban revolution (something I have not read much about in fiction), so there were aspects of this I really enjoyed (particularly laughing at all the characters who thought castro would be assassinated "soon", knowing that he survives over 600 attempts on his life) and there seemed to be a criticism of american imperialism and certainly the fbi/cia/government that I appreciated. But dang it was hard reading this from the perspective of three of the most unlikable main characters ever LOL.
I read this for a book club and I'm glad I did, it brought out a lot of good discussions and introduced me to a level of subject matter that I wouldn't have thought to check out on my own!
allenjd's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
strangledfruit's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. Ellroy
jimmypat's review against another edition
4.0
A bit of a masterpiece of style, but it is never as good as Ellroy's LA Quartet. One negative thing about the book is that it killed any desire to read the rest of the Underworld USA trilogy or anything else by Ellroy; I don't think I could drag myself through another book like this again.
lostjohn02's review against another edition
“He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History.”
History text based on a tableau of blood, sex, booze, and bullshit. American dynasties where the only difference between the mob, the cia, the White House, and Hollywood is who’s writing the latest piece for the tabloids.
A book that is admittedly hard to stomach after hundreds of pages of being in the heads of mid century scumbags, but it’s probably a more truthful telling of this history than lots of the official ones out there