The trilogy blends fiction and history to tell a story of political and legal corruption in the United States between 1958 and 1973.
American Tabloid covers the years 1958 to 1963, beginning exactly five years before the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, with the assassination as the book's
dénouement.
The Cold Six Thousand begins concurrently with the end of
American Tabloid and covers a slightly longer period, culminating in the assassinations of
Martin Luther King Jr. and
Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. ''Blood's a Rover'' spans the years 1968 to 1973, encompassing the
Vietnam War, the death of
J. Edgar Hoover, the
Black Power movement, the
Mob's attempt to build casinos in the
Dominican Republic, and the
Nixon administration. Ellroy has described the central themes of the trilogy: The essential contention of the Underworld USA trilogy ... is that America was never innocent. Here's the lineage: America was founded on a bedrock of racism, slaughter of the indigenous people, slavery, religious lunacy ... and nations are never innocent. Let alone nations as powerful as our beloved fatherland. What you have in
The Cold Six Thousand — which covers the years '63 to '68 — is that last gasp of pre-public-accountability America where the anti-communist mandate justified virtually any action. And it wasn't Kennedy's death that engendered mass skepticism. It was the protracted horror of the Vietnamese war. ==Characters==