American Tabloid is a 1995 novel by James Ellroy that chronicles the events surrounding three rogue American law enforcement officers from November 22, 1958, through November 22, 1963. Each becomes entangled in a web of interconnecting associations between the FBI, the CIA, and the Mafia, which eventually leads to their collective involvement in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
American Tabloid was Time Best Book (Fiction) for 1995. It is the first novel in Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy, followed by The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover.
Structure
American Tabloid is divided into five sections, each exactly one hundred chapters long (many are less than a page in length), and covers exactly five years. The narration eschews both exposition and lengthy dialog exchanges. All chapters begin with the chapter number, the location (usually the name of the city), and the date. The action of the book is completely sequential.
The book is written in the limited third-person, alternating between the three main characters. "Document inserts" reproducing newspaper clippings, letters, and transcripts of telephone calls are interspersed between chapters. There are flashbacks, but they are restricted to the present-tense memory of the protagonists.
Plot summary
Part I, Shakedowns, November – December 1958
The novel centers around the three principal characters: Pete Bondurant, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who presently works for billionaire Howard Hughes and runs small-time shakedowns; Kemper Boyd, an FBI agent who covets wealth and power; and Ward Littell, another FBI agent who is Boyd's friend and former partner. Although assigned to monitor communist activities, Littell's abiding hatred of organized crime leads him to vie for a spot on the Bureau's Top Hoodlum Squad.
The three men plot to entrap John F. Kennedy with a call girl; Boyd and Littell for J. Edgar Hoover, Bondurant for Hughes. The set-up is successful, but the Kennedy family prevents the transcript of the encounter from being printed in Hughes' Hush-Hush tabloid. At Hoover's direction, Boyd leaves the FBI and begins working with Hoover's personal nemeses—Kennedy and his younger brother Robert—on the U.S. Senate Select Committee investigating mob involvement in labor unions. The Kennedys, with their wealth and privilege, embody everything that Boyd hopes to gain. Littell, who meets the Kennedys through Boyd, is enraptured by Robert, both men sharing a hatred for organized crime.
Part II, Collusion, January 1959 – January 1961
Following the Cuban revolution, Bondurant and Boyd both become CIA operatives while Littell investigates Jimmy Hoffa's ties to the mob. Boyd also joins the employ of the Kennedy family, working on John's presidential campaign. Bondurant and Boyd ultimately collaborate with the CIA, the mob (seeking to retake its now-nationalized casinos in Havana) and far right Cuban refugees plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime. Littell becomes increasingly frustrated with Hoover's anti-communist mandates and begins investigating the mob on his own.
Through a series of snitches, Littell confirms that the Teamsters Union's pension fund is being used to finance organized crime. Littell tracks the fund's supposed "secret" accounting books to the home of mid-level mobster Jules Schiffrin in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, coercing Jack Ruby into searching Schiffrin's home. While waiting for Ruby, Littell is severely beaten by Bondurant; Ruby had tipped off Bondurant to Littell's operation, and Bondurant feared that Littell would endanger the CIA's Cuban plots.
After recuperating, Littell takes leave from the FBI, invades Schiffrin's home, and steals the fund's books himself. Cracking the books' code, he realizes that Joseph Kennedy loaned millions of dollars to the fund. Hoover fires Littell, revokes his pension, and blackballs him from every U.S. state's bar association. Boyd tries to get Littell a job with now-Attorney General designate Robert Kennedy, who emphatically refuses, also having received a report from Hoover of Littell's budding alcoholism and invented mob ties.
Part III, Pigs, February – November 1961
Boyd and Bondurant help train the "Blessington Cadre": Cuban exiles training to overthrow Castro at a CIA camp in Florida, recruited through Hoffa's "Tiger Kab" taxi stand in Miami. The mob, through New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, funds the operation by supplying the Cadre heroin for redistribution. Robert Kennedy has Marcello deported, unaware of (and uninterested in) his involvement in the CIA operation. Bondurant covertly absconds with Marcello when his INS plane lands in Central America.