Widespread Panic

Harry said, Be useful, kid. There s a cop killer at Georgia Street. Chief Horrall thinks you should take care of it. This is an opportunity you don t want to pass up.   
 
I said, Take care of what? The cop he shot isn t dead.   
 
Harry rolled his eyes. He passed me a key fob. He said, 4-A-32. It s in the watch commander s space. Look under the backseat.   
 
I got it. Harry locked on my look. He went Nooowww, he gets it. He winked and waltzed away from me.  
 
I steadied myself and stood still. I loaded up on that lynch-mob gestalt. I lurched through the squadroom and zombie-walked downstairs. I hit the garage.  
 
I found the watch commander s space. There s 4-A-32. The key fits the ignition. The garage was dark. Ceiling pipes leaked. Water drops turned wiggy colors and morphed into wild shapes.  
 
I gunned the gas and pulled out onto Spring Street. I drove sloooooow. The heist geek was jacked in the jail ward. It was a lockup-transfer ruse. It was forty-three years ago. It s still etched in Sinemascope and surround sound. I can still see the passersby on the street.  
 
There it is. There s Georgia Street Receiving.  
 
The jail ward sat on the north side. The squarejohn ward sat to the south. A narrow pathway bisected the buildings. It hit me then:  
 
They know you ll do it. They know you re that kind of guy.  
 
I reached under the backseat. I pulled out transfer papers for Ralph Mitchell Horvath. I grabbed a .32 snubnose revolver.  
 
I put the gun in my front pocket and grabbed the papers. I slid out of the sled. I popped down the pathway and went through the jail-ward door. 
 
The deskman was PD. He pointed to a punk cuffed to a drainpipe. The punk wore a loafer jacket and slit-bottomed

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.

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