James Ellroy begins American Tabloid with a monologue that comes straight out of his mouth. On first reading, it seems like mood building and nothing more. But upon rereading lines like "America was never innocent" and "It's time to embrace bad men" after finishing the book, the monologue seems more like an explicit defense of his work and writing style.

If you come to American Tabloid expecting flowery, beautiful prose, you will be sorely disappointed. Likewise, if you come expecting some morally good characters or at least a moral message, an implicit judgment of his characters' monstrous actions, you will be disappointed. There could be possibly no better assessment of Ellroy as a writer than that he 'embraces' bad men. The entire story is written from the perspective of three evil people, and the entire world that revolves around them is corrupted, too. Nobody has clean hands. The only thing that matters is who's smart and strong enough to win.

Fittingly, his prose style is to manically cut down to the absolute minimum. He uses complete sentences only when absolutely necessary. At times, I found myself longing for poetry, but there was also something gripping about this abolishment of the inessential. It's almost frighteningly immediate.