James Ellroy

Somewhere out there is a murderer with over twenty killings to his name - each an apparently random slaying of a woman, over a twenty-year period and all unconnected on the police files. But Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins begins to see a pattern: he senses connections between this string of seemingly motiveless, pointless and unsolved killings.

Freddy Otash is the man in the know and the man to know in '50s L.A. He operates with two simple rules -- he'll do anything but commit murder, and he'll never work with the commies.Freddy is an ex-L.A. cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood -- and it got to him bad. So Chief William H. Parker canned him. Now, he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp -- and, most notably -- the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet -- and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink and the scurrilous skank on the feckless foibles of misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and potzopoliticians. Freaky Freddy outs them all!In Widespread Panic, we traverse the depths of '50s L.A. and dig on the inner workings of Confidential. You'll go to Burt Lancaster's lushly appointed torture den... You'll groove overhyped legend James Dean as Freddy's chief stooge... You'll be there for Freddy's ring-a-ding rendezvous with Liz Taylor... You'll be front and center as Freddy anoints himself the "Tattle Tyrant Who Held Hollywood Hostage."