There aren't any good guys in this novel. Anybody who starts out with anything close to a normal set of morals has completely lost them by story's end. Though filled with real people, it centers around three completely fictional characters. Kemper Boyd carries out a tangled web of undercover work for the FBI, CIA, the Kennedy clan and the mob. Pete Bondurant is an ex cop who plays body guard for Howard Hughes and then Jimmy Hoffa, and has a penchant for bloody violence. Ward Little is an FBI agent hungry for anti mob activity, who through a series of mistakes eventually begins working directly for them.

Each character is destroyed, destroyed again and sometimes built up a little before they are yet again destroyed. Nobody walks away clean, or undamaged. The plot gets a little thick and there were moments where I wish it had been supplied with a map and a compass. The subplots are so plentiful and intertwined it's sometimes difficult to tell where you are at within the myriad of webs. Elroy's style doesn't help in this matter, for it is about as hard-boiled as a n author's style can be. I don't think there is a paragraph longer than five sentences, and there are a great many consisting of only one line. Many critics have found this immensely annoying, and find the novel difficult to read because of it. I had no problem with it. It made the novel faster to read, and made it seem much lighter than it actually is—although, I must say that at the halfway point through the sequel, it has grown quite tiresome.

To supply some of the details left out in the brevity of his prose, Elroy supplies any number of fake documents including tabloid cut-outs, top secret documents, and verbatim transcripts of phone conversations.

It is a fast-paced, exciting, often violent book. It is pulp fiction with literary sensibilities. It doesn't work particularly well as revisionist history, but for fans of hard boiled crime stories, or those who can't get enough conspiracy. it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.