James Ellroy - American Tabloid

American Tabloid is the dark underbelly of the American dream. Set in the years leading up to the assassination of President John F Kennedy, it follows the interweaving stories of three main characters, each of them representing different violent, racist, right-wing sections of the USA. We have FBI agents out organising to ensure black people in the South can vote, while working with the KKK to push their interests elsewhere. There are political assassins, mafia agents and dirty lawyers.

We've got corrupt politicians, businessmen and union leaders (step forward Hoffa) pushing their interests, by preparing to assassinate, bribe and steal their way to further wealth and power. We've got right-wingers and anti-Communists organising to overthrow Castro in the Bay of Pigs, and happy to work with any armed bigot they can, and we've got a handful of people who think the world could be a better place.

Its a compelling, vicious read. As Ellroy weaves the stories together (each of his characters trying to compartmentalise different bits of their life from each other) all the threads head towards Dallas and November 22 1963, as JFK is heading out on a motorcade.

Fiction and reality mingle here. Real life characters like JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Howard Hughes interact with some truly nasty fictional characters. Sometimes its difficult to work out who is real and who isn't. The real problem is that it feels so real, that it seems Ellroy's got his hands on some secret US government files and knows what really happened.

The frightening thing, and Ellroy's great achievement, is that it could be. Ellroy's punctured prose is a bit like the noise a machine gun makes and sometimes I lost track of who was speaking or being shot. But it certainly kept the tension up. I'm looking forward to the remaining volumes in the trilogy.

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