Friday, Sep. 04, 2009
Blood's a Rover
James Ellroy's novels — L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia — are black holes of American noir so dark and dense that no human decency or redemption can escape them. Blood's a Rover (the phrase comes from an A.E. Housman poem) is a book of almost psychotic violence. It's set in the sweltering summer of 1968, in a shadowy world of political operatives and assassins, black-bag men who clip black militants and commie sympathizers at the whims of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. Drugs, an armored car heist, beat-downs, frame-ups, bribes, disinformation — it's a conspiracy theorist's nightmare, and a peek backstage at the American apocalypse.