Widespread Panic: Freddy Otash Confesses

A corrupt cop-turned-PI seeks a murderer while scouring 1950s Hollywood for sleaze for the scandal sheets. While it teeters on the edge of parody Ellroyism at times, this is nevertheless swaggering stuff if you go with it. A minor work in the canon, perhaps, but fans will come away pleased.

Frankly I loved it. It's pure Ellroy - or late Ellroy - and that requires some work. But once you're inside his head - or Freddy Otash's head in this case - you can swim in it and enjoy it. Because it's very enjoyable - the jive talk, the gestalt, the sleaze, the short sentences, the Reds under the bed, Hollyweird, the crimes, cops, victims, movie folk, famous stars from yesteryear and whole glorious mess of it all. In visual terms, I was reminded of Bob Rauschenberg. Superficially it seems slapdash and poor, but actually it's highly intelligent and very hard to pull off. JE is the master. Put in some work, and soon it will get under your skin and you'll be left craving more.

Quite concise and not as long as Blood's a Rover or Cold Six Thousand,so a quick read. Scurrilous smut and scandals from the master. Brilliant as ever. Could have took things further, maybe he just had to get out of there!

Familiar Ellroy territory but enjoyable enough.

normal convoluted shenanigans from the master.

Ellroy wrote a book. Ellroy scribed a book. Ellroy penned a book. Some of it made sense. It was mostly unverified facts about famous people. It had sentences. Some were short. Some were a bit longer. For christmas he'd like some commas please.

If you like Ellroy you’ll enjoy this

Superb Ellroy at his best .