Red Sheet

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. Philip Roth coined the phrase “indigenous American berserk.” RED SHEET is James Ellroy at his most unhinged and deep-freeze controlled.

It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked, wimped, and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from commies, comsymps, and deep-cover pinkos hunkered in L.A. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.

Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead IO. He’s a stone criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a sex-murder 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 coming unglued. He’s running the probe, he just met a woman, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman — Tricky Dick Nixon’s head goons — have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press out to get him.

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

RED SHEET is an anti-communist novel in the manner of literary pariahs Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane. Breakneck thrills and red-baiting piety run equivalent here. It is James Ellroy’s most crazed kamikaze run and greatest work of fiction.