Red Sheet - James Ellroy

'One of the great American writers of our time. LOS ANGELES TIMES
Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted, and paranoid. STEPHEN KING
The American Dostoyevsky. JOYCE CAROL OATES
The neo-noir eminence of L.A. crime fiction. THE NEW YORKER
Fast, punchy, telegrammatic prose that demands to be read quickly and that flows like an enraged river. NPR

Turn to the first page. Disavow what you think you know about the so-called Red Scare. This is commie malfeasance and 60s L.A. as you ve never read it before.

It s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.

Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead investigating officer. He s a stone-cold criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There s a murder on Halloween night. It may link to ex-VP and current gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and two commie snuffs from eight years back. Freddy s overworked and overamped. He s running the probe, and Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman Tricky Dick Nixon s head goons have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press.

L.A. is coming unglued. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for a city council seat and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride, out to exploit racial tension and peddle untold copies of his dirty rag.

RED SHEET is James Ellroy s most crazed kamikaze run and a daring, subversive work of fiction.