Widespread Panic, James Ellroy
Widespread Panic, James Ellroy
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Widespread Panic
A novel

Author: James Ellroy

Narrator: Craig Wasson

Unabridged: 12 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/15/2021

Synopsis

From the modern master of noir comes a novel based on the real-life Hollywood fixer Freddy Otash, the malevolent monarch of the 1950s L.A. underground, and his Tinseltown tabloid Confidential magazine.

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in ‘50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp—and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine.
 
Confidential presaged the idiot internet—and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson—Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS.
 
“I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.”
 
In Freddy’s viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950s Hollywood to the ground. It’s a blazing revelation of coruscating corruption, pervasive paranoia, and of sin and redemption with nothing in between.
 
Here is James Ellroy in savage quintessence. Freddy Otash confesses—and you are here to read and succumb.
 

About The Author

JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover, and the L.A. Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He lives in Colorado.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Blaine on April 04, 2021

He may be 73, but James Ellroy keeps cranking out wonderful hard-nosed LA Noir crime novels. For a few years he seemed to have lost his edge, but this 3rd installment of his 2nd LA Quartet is a wonderful read, a book that is hard to put down and for fans of his style of writing it makes us look forw......more

Goodreads review by Leftbanker on November 23, 2023

I gave this three stars instead of one simply because it was so ridiculous that I laughed out loud several times, although the author wasn't telling a joke. However, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe during most of this novel mostly set in the 50s, you know, back when everyone was some sorta h......more

Goodreads review by OutlawPoet on May 21, 2021

I’m kind of going back and forth on this one. Ellroy’s style is wonderfully in evidence here – his rapid fire patter, the oh-so-cool turn of a vintage phrase, the sheer nonchalance of violence with a smattering of unfortunate but right for its time racism and homophobia (his characters, not him) that......more

Goodreads review by David on July 01, 2021

Ellroy used to be a good, sometimes great, writer but that was several books ago. His hepcat POV stream of consciousness spiels oooooold and causes him to lose the narrative. There’s no plot here so issues (the Red Scare) and characters (USC basketball player/love interest “Stretch”) appear and disa......more

Goodreads review by Bookreporter.com on June 20, 2021

WIDESPREAD PANIC is not so much a reading experience as an immersion into a time (the 1950s) and place (Los Angeles). The events described by author James Ellroy become more real by virtue of his (occasional) exaggeration in a work that is ostensibly historical fiction. Even the prose that he spits......more

Quotes

ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"Graphic, stunning and in many instances hilarious. . . . No punches are pulled, and no literary expense is spared."
—BookReporter

“Widespread Panic is quintessential Ellroy, but with enough alliteration, Hollyweird flavor, booze, distressed damsels, communist conspiracies, and extortion to make this the most Ellroy novel he's ever written. . . . Wildly entertaining and memorable. . . . Otash's voice is unlike anything else in contemporary fiction. . . . A spiritual companion to L.A. Confidential.”
—NPR

“There is here, as in Ellroy’s other novels, so fully researched and plausible an evocation of the world about which he writes, so deft an intermingling of the real and fictional characters that the novelist asks the reader to believe that these events could have happened, and that some of them (Jack Kennedy’s exhaustive and exhausting philandering, for example) probably did. This commingling of fact and fiction is, of course, the basis upon which the myths of Hollywood, and hence, at this point, those of our broader American culture, rest.”
—Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine
 
“Widespread Panic unfolds in shimmering Ellroyvision. In recounting his sinful past, Freewheeling Freddy mainlines the repetitive rhumba of his scandal sheet until it’s become the mother’s milk of his speech and psyche, and he bops to alliteration’s alluring algorithm.” 
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
 
“[Ellroy is] the dean of Los Angeles crime novelists. . . . You come [to Ellroy] to roll around in the blood and the mud, to ping along to the plot twists and betrayals.”
—Los Angeles Times

“If you love Ellroy, you’ll love this wild ride.” 
—The Washington Post (10 Books to read in June)

“Devious and delicious. . . . Ellroy’s total command of the jazzy, alliterative argot of the era never fails to astonish. This is a must for L.A. noir fans.” 
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Wildly flamboyant. . . . A spectacular explosion of language. For those with a taste for foul-mouthed fireworks and freeform jazz solos, both dazzling and exhausting, Ellroy is your man.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“A noirish romp through the sewage of 1950s Hollywood sleaze. . . . Entertainingly hop-headed. . . . The author [is] operating at maximum efficiency, mainlining a primo blend of over-the-top alliteration and down-in-the-gutter scandal. . . . A delirious thrill ride through the tabloid underbelly of Tinseltown. Relentlessly rabid, for those with a taste for the seamier.” 
—Kirkus Reviews

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