KNOPF TEASER:"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."
—© Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
CENTURY TEASER:"'The outstanding crime-writer of his generation' (Peter Gutteridge, Independent), turns his talents to the whirlpool of American politics in the Kennedy era in his most ambitious novel to date.
"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 discontent 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 clamours for payback and the 1000 days ends in brutal quietus in 1963."
—© Century
POINTS:The novel was first published by Knopf in the U.S. (ISBN: 0-679-40391-4) on Feb. 27, 1995 and by Century in the U.K. (ISBN: 0-7126-4816-X). The American hardcover edition weighs-in at 576 pages. The U.K. edition totals 585 pages.
Cover design for the U.S. edition was executed by Chip Kidd. Ellroy dedicated the novel to his agent, Nat Sobel.
The images up top are of the U.S. hardcover first edition (left) and the U.S. mass market paperback first edition (beware of these: a few got out with the back of the book bound at the front and a portion of the middle missing).
STRANGE FACT:For unknown reasons, the U.K. version of "Tabloid" does not contain the prelude which begins with the now famous assertion, "America was never innocent." Having volume 2, "The Cold Six Thousand," now available to us, the prelude that keys the U.S. edition now reads as a kind of bombastic mission statement for the entire "Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy." Why this brief preface was omitted from the U.K. edition remains a mystery.
• Beatrice Interview
• Fluxeuropa Review
• Daily Beacon Review
• Prieboy Review
• Mystery Guide Review
• American Library Association Review
• Scarlet & Black Review
Order the novel American Tabloid
Order the book on tape American Tabloid
Order the U.K. trade paperback
