On this month’s World Book Club, as he turns seventy, another chance to hear acclaimed American writer James Ellroy, who over a span of fifteen years worked on a massive fictional chronicle of 1960s America.

American Tabloid, the first of the three books, exposes the underbelly of a country on the threshold of Kennedy's golden age, and follows three men close to the tentacles of power in a conspiracy with the Mafia that leads to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the assassination of JFK in Dallas. Brutally brilliant and profane, the book bursts at the seams with crooked policemen, corrupt politicians, mobsters and hitmen, all driven by a desire for power, money and the settling of old scores.

Image: James Ellroy (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)