James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover *** 1/2

Blood's a Rover is the third and final chapter of Ellroy's "Underworld U.S.A" trilogy, following American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand. These books give an alternative history of America during the 1960s and 1970s, a history in which all conspiracy theories are true and the course of our nation is determined by violent, cynical men pursuing their obsessions and perversions. They are written in Ellroy's distinctive staccato style. To give you a flavor, here's a section from a page chosen completely at random (page 142). The action takes place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago:

The Frogman slipped Crutch a hash brownie. Their driver was an on-duty cop. The riot-zone Chicago tour boded all-time blast.

It was Mesplede's idea. He ran into Crutch in the lobby. Crutch was up for it. Bowen was in jail. Buzz was working the listening post. Observe History, sure.

The red-flag boys. The no-bra girls. The cops with stubbed cigars. The nymph chicks tossing bouquets at National Guardsman.

The cop driver swigged Old Crow. His cruiser was air-conditioned. They got the picture show devoid of night heat. 

It's jarring at first, but eventually you succumb to its rhythm.

The characters are all typical Ellroy. Every man has an event in his past that haunts him. Because of it, he pursues some cause or some woman — most likely both — obsessively. But he keeps his obsession a secret from his compatriots, as they keep their obsessions secret from him.

Personally, I prefer Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet" to his "Underworld U.S.A." trilogy. Those earlier books, which included his most famous one L.A. Confidential, featured the same sorts of characters and the same general world view as the later books, and the last L.A. book, White Jazz, was where he refined his style. The "L.A. Quartet" books had more mystery to them, because the plots were more local and less concerned with incorporating real-life events. You wondered what was going to happen rather than how the story would explain the Kennedy assassination.

I liked Blood's a Rover better than the other two "Underworld U.S.A." books for the same reason: there is more personal story here than I remember in the previous two. In fact, the world-historical part of the story ends at the conclusion of Part IV, with three parts left to go.

If you are interested in James Ellroy, I recommend starting with Black Dahlia and working forward from there.

Jonathan Raban, Bad Land **** 1/2

As he did in one of my favorite travel books Passage to Juneau, Raban combines historical narrative, natural history, and personal observation in a seamless way to paint a vivid picture of a place and how it came to be the way it is. In Bad Land, the place is the plains of eastern Montana. In the early part of the 20th century, the railroads and the US government encouraged Montana homesteading, establishing towns every dozen miles or so along the railway and granting land that was essentially free. However, the romantic picture of honest toil converting the arid plains into a new Eden met with the reality of dry summers and harsh winters. Raban shows how the homesteading experience has colored the mindset of the western United States, much as the legend of the cowboy has. My only complaint is that Raban explicitly repeats his theme too many times — perhaps the chapters originally appeared as separate articles?

This book is a good companion to Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. It provides a ground-level illustration of the difficulties that John Wesley Powell warned about.