Reviews for Red sheet : a novel
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
In which Richard Nixon meets a soon-to-be-dead woman in a “commie safe house,” and a strange game is afoot. Ellroy always packs a tremendous amount of detail and a large dramatis personae into his potboilers, and this one is no exception. In his third novel to star Freddy Otash—criminal turned police officer, unredeemed dope addict and boozer, and all-around bull in a china shop—Ellroy turns in a loopy narrative full of real-life criminals, cops, and other figures from LA history, including Daryl Gates, Dalton Trumbo, H.R. Haldeman, and Nixon himself. The setup: the Cuban Missile Crisis has just passed, and an ambitious Robert Kennedy—“Ratfuck Bob Kennedy,” Otash calls him—has ordered up a Red Scare to divert attention from the news that Marilyn Monroe has died in a scenario with unpleasant hints of connection to both himself and his brother, the president. Enter “SHIT—-the Sheriff’s Handpicked Intelligence Team” and Ellroy’s players are soon pulling dossiers on half the city, including Nixon, who, it soon develops, “is embroiled in a horrific sex snuff.” Said snuff involves two Communist Party stalwarts who ratted out Alger Hiss to Nixon and were dispatched following a failed shakedown, killed, perhaps, by four very bad brothers who “were big priest-killers and nun-rapers during the Spanish Civil War.” That war isn’t the only conflict to be evoked; one attorney on the make hopes to revive Mexico’s little-known Cristero Rebellion to wreak vengeance on the anti-clerical Reds. As if all that weren’t enough, Ellroy populates his yarn with the likes of a strung out Hugh Hefner, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping (and an appearance by Charles Lindbergh himself), commies turned into John Birchers, and musical cameos by Quincy Jones and folk singer Judy Henske. The upshot? Kvetches Otash, “Richard Nixon still owes me thirty grand.” A head-spinning carom of a book, and a lot of fun amid all the blood and mayhem. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
It’s the fall of 1962. The Kennedy brothers are running the White House and the Department of Justice. Ex-VP Nixon is aiming to be California’s next governor. A communist cell is committing gruesome murders. Names are dropped: Hugh Hefner, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Alger Hiss. Bodies abound in lurid display, slashes and gashes in all the wrong places. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy names Ellroy’s recurring rogue, L.A. police detective Freddy Otash—last seen in The Enchanters (2023), which is also set in 1962—as lead investigator, and Otash plunges down white rabbit holes of conspiracy theories. All roads careen back to the top tiers of the Los Angeles police, the California government, and Washington, DC. Eidetic master Otash bounces like a pinball from one skeezy crime scene to another, benzo-popping all the way. As always, Ellroy’s jargon is jazzy, his characters caricatures on steroids. In the latest Otash adventure, readers will find themselves seduced by Ellroy’s hipster take on history’s seamy underside and the amped-up atmosphere in which the plausible and improbable ooze together in a head-spinning daze.
Publishers Weekly
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The relentless latest from MWA Grand Master Ellroy (The Enchanters) immerses readers in 1962 L.A. in the fraught aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When Attorney General Robert Kennedy launches a sweeping anti-communist crackdown, Freddy Otash, a drug-addicted LAPD officer, is thrust into the heart of the storm. Otash’s initial inquiry focuses on the Creative Trade Workers Alliance, a communist-affiliated union mired in corruption, drug trafficking, and political violence, and soon intersects with the racially charged battle over California’s Rumford Fair Housing Act, which disallows discrimination in public housing. Along the way, Otash crosses paths with real-life figures including civil rights leader Tom Bradley and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, as well as fictional union bosses who blur the boundaries between crime and politics. The brutal murder of a communist courier and a string of unsolved homicides deepen the intrigue as Otash navigates betrayals and ideological rifts within the LAPD and beyond, culminating in a tense showdown involving secret safe houses and a shadowy organization known as the Indigenous Cell. Ellroy’s dense, slang-laced prose paints a brooding portrait of a city awash in Cold War anxiety. It’s a rewarding ride for noir fans. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (June)Correction: An earlier verison of ths review referred to the lead character by the wrong name.
