Blood's a Rover
First US edition cover
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| Author | James Ellroy |
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| Cover artist | Front-of-jacket photograph by Jeanne Hilary, Jacket design by Chip Kidd |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Underworld USA Trilogy |
| Genre | Crime novel, noir fiction, political fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, Windmill Books (Mass Market paperback) |
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Publication date
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September 22, 2009, June 3, 2010 (Mass Market paperback) |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback), unabridged audible audio edition, audio CD (both narrated by Craig Wasson), and Kindle |
| Pages | 656 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 290466912 |
| 813'/.54—dc22 | |
| LC Class | PS3555.L6274B57 2009 |
| Preceded by | The Cold Six Thousand |
Blood's a Rover is a 2009 crime fiction novel by American author James Ellroy. It follows American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand as the final volume of Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy. A 10,000-word excerpt was published in the December 2008 issue of Playboy. The book was released on September 22, 2009. James Ellroy dedicated Blood's a Rover "To J.M. Comrade: For Everything You Gave Me."
The book's title and epigraph is taken from a poem titled "Reveille" by A. E. Housman:
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad; when the journey's over
Ellroy's literary agent, Sobel Weber Associates, posted a brief blurb for Blood's a Rover on its website in September 2008. It mentioned the novel's three protagonists and briefly outlined some of the novel's major plot points. These include the reappearance of Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover, FBI infiltration into militant black power groups, Mafia activity in the Dominican Republic, and "voodoo vibe in Haiti."
Ellroy commented on the scope of Blood's a Rover several times during his tour to promote The Cold Six Thousand. When asked if he still saw Underworld U.S.A. as a trilogy, Ellroy responded, "American Tabloid is the first volume of my Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. The Cold Six Thousand is my second. I will soon begin work on the epic third volume, a ghastly tale of political malfeasance and imperialistic bad juju from 1968 to 1972." He said the book would have "a different [prose] style entirely" than The Cold Six Thousand.
Ellroy said he would steer clear of the Watergate scandal: "The Cold Six Thousand... covers the matrix of American politics and crime from 1963 to 1968; the first, American Tabloid, covers 1958 to 1963; a third will proceed to 1972. You can see exactly where the story's going: the '68 election, the Mob's foreign casino plan, Nixon in office, all that. I'll stop short of Watergate, because Watergate bores me." He also told interviewer Robert Birnbaum, "It's [Watergate] been done to death. And most of the characters are still alive; thus you can't use them fictionally."
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