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Red Sheet
  • Published: 21 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529152401
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $34.99

Red Sheet

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
21 July 2026
EBook
16 July 2026
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'The King of macho noir' returns to his most notorious character, Freddy Otash, in a high-octane, daring story.

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.

It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.

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

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

RED SHEET is James Ellroy’s most crazed kamikaze run and a daring, subversive work of fiction.
  • Published: 21 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529152401
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $34.99
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About the author

James Ellroy

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 also the author of two other Freddy Otash novels, Widespread Panic and The Enchanters. He was awarded the 2022 Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Colorado.

portrait photo of James Ellroy

Also by James Ellroy

The Enchanters
Widespread Panic
The L.A. Quartet
American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand
This Storm
Perfidia
Because the Night
See all

Praise for Red Sheet

James Ellroy is the king of macho noir.

Guardian

One of the great American writers of our time.

Los Angeles Times

Fierce, brave, funny, scatological, beautiful, convoluted, and paranoid.

Stephen King

James Ellroy is the American Dostoyevsky.

Joyce Carol Oates

James Ellroy is the neo-noir eminence of L.A. crime fiction.

The New Yorker

Ellroy keeps things moving at breakneck speed at all times ... The trick to it is Ellroy's incomparable style; fast, punchy, telegrammatic prose that demands to be read quickly and that flows like an enraged river.

NPR

There has never been a writer like James Ellroy. . . . He has been making real a secret world behind the official history of America . . . and to enter it is to experience a vivid eyeball rush of recognition.

The Telegraph
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