I’ve put Freedom to one side, as I need something more heavy duty. Heavy duty crime pain-killers don’t come much better than James Ellroy, so I lock and load his latest, Blood’s a Rover.
Starting in 1968, it charts the dying days of J Edgar Hoover’s reign as FBI chief, the beginning of Nixon’s presidency and all the bad things that go on behind the scenes.
It’s a sprawling exhausting read of mad genius. Thankfully, it's also the final part of his US underworld trilogy (American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand).
It can’t hold a flame though to his earlier masterpiece the LA quartet – The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz – where his trademark staccato style and narrative power vividly evoke a violent period in modern American history.
But it's still damn good.
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