James Ellroy

widespread-panic

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more

source_10558

By signing up, I confirm that I'm over 16. To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our <a href="/company/about-us/notices/privacy-policy/">Privacy Policy</a>

Keep an eye out for a confirmation in your inbox

Stories, ideas and giveaways to help you spark young imaginations

source_10972

The latest books, activities and tips to help you grow little readers

source_10975

About us

About Us (Header 4)

john-le-carre-a-legacy-of-spies-960-2.jpg

Margaret Atwood

Richard Osman

Malorie Blackman

George Orwell

marian_keyes_mobile_320x200px.png

Elif Shafak

shonfaye

Authors (Header 3)

Books (Header 2)

Company

Features (Header 1)

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

The Enchanters

This Storm

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

The L.A. Quartet

Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy Vol.1

American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand

Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy Vol. 2

Blood's a Rover

Destination: Morgue

Perfidia

Clandestine

Brown's Requiem

Because the Night

The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz

Dudley Smith Trio

Four of James Ellroy's most popular crime novels featuring the infamous Dudley Smith, which include: 'The Black Dahlia', 'The Big Nowhere', 'L.A. Confidential' and 'White Jazz'.

Classic Noir

LA Confidential

White Jazz

The first book in the classic L.A. Quartet crime series

The Black Dahlia

The Big Nowhere

My Pursuit of Women

The Hilliker Curse

The Best American Noir of the Century

My Dark Places

Blood's A Rover

American Tabloid

Widespread Panic

Extraordinary... Ellroy's legion of fans will love it

A characteristically vigorous tour of his established territory ... Like drinking a pint of espresso

Very definitely one for Ellroy fans to lap up like warm milk

What astonishes at first is how an apparently breathless style forces you to slow down: there are passages where the prose reads more like poetry. It's writing to relish, even if the events described are a non-stop cavalcade of debauchery, double-dealing, drugs, drama, deceit, and death. The Demon Dog delivers, indubitably

Ellroy still lives and breathes in the 1950s and no one could have come up with a book like this but him. Fascinating, gripping, dubious but unique

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

This 1950s standalone outing, told in a lacerating first person, represents the barely coherent confessions of a corrupt cop who has become an equally compromised private investigator for the scandal mag Confidential. Freddy Otash leads the reader through a Dante's Inferno reimagined as a sleazy Hollywood (with real-life figures galore - such as film star James Dean - all handled in scurrilous fashion) as he tracks down the killer of one of Kennedy's mistresses. Purgatory is rarely this much fun

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

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

[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

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

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

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

Freddy is an ex-L.A. cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood - and it got to him bad. Now he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp - and, most notably, the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. 
 
Welcome to the world of the malevolent monarch of the Hollywood underground - a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films and strange bedfellows.

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles. 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 is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Colorado.

Widespread Panic

Select a format:

Retailers:

Summary

Reviews

About the author

James Ellroy

More from this Author

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter