Wayne encounters two characters reappearing from American Tabloid: Ward Littell, ex–FBI agent, lawyer to the mob and to Howard Hughes, is a disillusioned closet liberal described as “lugging a Jesus Cross in his sewer” Pete Bondurant, ex-CIA and current mob enforcer, is rabidly anti-Communist and anti-Castro. Ellroy begins with JFK’s murder and cover-up, which inadvertently involve Wayne Tendrow, a Las Vegas cop with a wobbly moral compass and a love/hate relationship with his wealthy, controlling, right-wing, racist father. This is Plymouth Rock turned over after three centuries to expose the creatures wriggling in the dark beneath the surface of the American Dream. Picking up roughly where American Tabloid (1995) left off, Ellroy’s big, ambitious new novel, bristling with violence, rockets through the 1960s naming names and weaving a terrifyingly believable tale of linked conspiracies in the three assassinations that shook America to the core.
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