The Year of the Ox Reading 4: "American Tabloid"

This is the second time that I have read this novel. I really like James Ellroy. He writes really gritty fiction. This novel is about the build up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Ellroy paints a picture of life in America in the early 1960's as seen through the eyes of CIA and FBI agents and the criminals they pursue and ultimately ally themselves with.
I like this book a lot but I realized that people in real life don't throw as many phones or punch as many walls as they do in this book. It seems like every other moment someone is doing this. I understand being angry, but how many times can you break your knuckles against the wall. And phones must have been really cheap in the 1960's. I know the Kennedys could afford new ones all of the time (they are also characters in this novel) but the average schmoe couldn't just call Ma Bell everything they needed a new one.
That being said, it makes you wonder how much of this is true. Was there a conspiracy to kill the president? Was J. Edgar Hoover in bed with the mob? Were Howard Hughes and Fidel Castro all involved in some crazy nut case? If the reality is as interesting as the story, then those were amazing times. I am not sure "Madmen" can live up to this violent vision.
Well there is a sequel and a third in the works so you will hear more of those at some later date.