Widespread Panic

This 1950s standalone outing, told in a lacerating first person, represents the barely coherent confessions of a corrupt cop who has become an equally compromised private investigator for the scandal mag Confidential. Freddy Otash leads the reader through a Dante's Inferno reimagined as a sleazy Hollywood (with real-life figures galore - such as film star James Dean - all handled in scurrilous fashion) as he tracks down the killer of one of Kennedy's mistresses. Purgatory is rarely this much fun

Financial Times

Purgatory is rarely this much fun

Financial Times

His most compelling novel in ages

Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph

I thought it was brilliant

Belfast Telegraph

Great fun

i Paper

Very definitely one for Ellroy fans to lap up like warm milk

Bookbrunch

A characteristically vigorous tour of his established territory ... Like drinking a pint of espresso

Sam Leith, Times Literary Supplement

James Ellroy is the king of macho noir

Laura Wilson, Guardian

What astonishes at first is how an apparently breathless style forces you to slow down: there are passages where the prose reads more like poetry. It's writing to relish, even if the events described are a non-stop cavalcade of debauchery, double-dealing, drugs, drama, deceit, and death. The Demon Dog delivers, indubitably

The Quietus

Ellroy still lives and breathes in the 1950s and no one could have come up with a book like this but him. Fascinating, gripping, dubious but unique

Crime Time

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

Unfolds in shimmering Ellroyvision

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 L.A. noir fans

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Wildly flamboyant. . . . A spectacular explosion of language. For those with a taste for foul-mouthed fireworks and freeform jazz solos, both dazzling and exhausting, Ellroy is your man

Booklist (starred review)

A noirish romp through the sewage of 1950s Hollywood sleaze. . . . Entertainingly hop-headed. . . . The author [is] operating at maximum efficiency, mainlining a primo blend of over-the-top alliteration and down-in-the-gutter scandal. . . . A delirious thrill ride through the tabloid underbelly of Tinseltown. Relentlessly rabid, for those with a taste for the seamier

Kirkus Reviews

Like drinking a pint of espresso

Sam Leith, TLS

Extraordinary... Ellroy's legion of fans will love it

Mark Sanderson, The Times