As James Ellroy tours the country to support his new novel, “Blood’s A Rover,” GalleyCat caught up with the hardboiled writer to find more about the sprawling conclusion to his “Underworld USA Trilogy.”
The book begins in 1968 in Los Angeles, as a cast of crooked LAPD cops and obsessive FBI spooks infiltrate two fictional militant activist groups, the Black Tribe Alliance and the Mau Mau Liberation Front. While researching the interview, GalleyCat uncovered some vintage footage of a real raid on Black Panther headquarters in 1969 that turned LA into a war zone. This video essay mixes real footage with Ellroy’s interview.
Here’s more about the book, from the publisher: “Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ready to deploy at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black militants are warring in southside L.A. The Feds are concocting draconian countermeasures. And fate has placed three men at the vortex of History.”