Created by James Ellroy
(1948–)
“Ellroy’s a dipshit. I knew him in my waning months alive. I’ve been granted tell-all telepathy. I will know that cocksucker cold.”
— Freddy nails Ellroy to the wall, in “Shakedown”
According to Wikipedia, FREDDY OTASH was “a Los Angeles police officer, private investigator, author, and a WWII Marine veteran, who became known as a Hollywood fixer, while operating as its ‘most infamous’ private detective; he is most remembered as ‘the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character Jake Gittes in the film, Chinatown.”
But according to James Ellroy, he’s “a corrupt cop turned sleaze hustler, extortionist, pimp, and an actual historical figure who made the 1950s magazine Confidential the go-to source for the sins of the rich and famous.”
Drug-addled, possibly deranged and certainly delusional, paranoid and utterly without scruples, Otash is a nasty piece of work, served up Ellroy style.
Not that he’s much of a stretch—we’ve seen similar protagonists from Ellroy before. It’s pretty much his speciality. In fact, previously, Ellroy had used a fictionalized version of the real-life Otash as a basis for supporting characters, in several of his novels and stories, and Otash himself in The Cold Six Thousand (2001) and Blood’s a Rover (2009), but he really swung for the fences in his 2012 novelette “Shakedown,” placing Orash squarely in the spotlight.
In the digital-only release (no longer available), it’s 1992, and Freddy has suffered a massive heart attack. He finds himself in Hell (well, Purgatory, really), where he has dispatched to confess his sordid sins and spill the slime on the likes of Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Jack Kennedy, Montgomery Clift, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean and more if he wants to get to heaven.
Or, as Freddy sums it up: “There’s Sin and Atonement, fuckers. There’s nothing else.”
It was an audacious read; an unapologetically cheesy, cynical, name-calling wallow in sleaze, a tabloid feeding frenzy narrated by motormouth Freddie himself in his tabloid-ready rat-a-tat-tat, which he describes as the “lexicon of the lowdown… the dialogue of the dish… the slithering slur and the thrill of the threat.” He goes on (and on), in a dizzying cascade of alliteration, digression, self-aggrandizement and true (or at least true-ish) confession, dragging both fictional and real-life characters into the slime with him.
It was a helluva read.
Nine years later, in 2021, we got Widespread Panic, a full-length novel and the start of a brand new series, a reheated and expanded version of the tell-all from the “pervert purgatory” of the crooked cop–turned–extortionist and sleaze merchant. By the second entry in the series, The Enchanters (2023), Freddy was merrily recounting his “investigation” into the death of Marilyn Monroe…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz—were international best sellers. Other bestsellers include American Tabloid (1995); his memoir, My Dark Places (1996) and The Cold Six Thousand (2001). He’s also written about private eye Fritz Brown in Brown’s Requiem (1981), forties gumshoe Spade Hearns and 1950’s scandal sheet editor Danny Getchell, a character not unlike Freddie. Ellroy used to live in Los Angeles; now he’s somewhere in Colorado.
He’s known for setting his stories in the 1940s and 50s, which allows him to be as racist, homophobic and misogynistic as he wants, and for his impressionistic, always alliterative Morse code writing style, which spits out sentence fragments like broken teeth. Ellroy calls himself the “Demon Dog of American Crime Fction,” and his rabid long-time fans lap it up. Newcomers, however, may get lost in the deluge.
UNDER OATH
- “It’s a delirious thrill ride through the tabloid underbelly of Tinseltown, though it runs out of gas before providing much of a climax. Relentlessly rabid, for those with a taste for the seamier.”
— Kirkus Reviews on Widespread Panic - “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 on Widespread Panic - “Ellroy masterfully orchestrates his vast array of subplots to create a tour de force of vibe and atmosphere. That ambience, plus his signature jazzy turns of phrase, will thrill longtime fans. . . . Fascinating … a hell of a ride.”
—Publishers Weekly onThe Enchanters - “Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, and J. Edgar Hoover were all real people, of course, before they became Ellroy characters. So was protagonist Freddy Otash… though he has become better known as a figure in Ellroy’s fiction.”
—Kirkus Reviews on The Enchanters
NOVELLETTES
- Shakedown (2012, digital) | Kindle it!
NOVELS
- Widespread Panic (2021) | Buy this book | Buy the audio| Kindle it!
- The Enchanters (2023) | Buy this book | Buy the audio| Kindle it!
THE DICK OF THE DAY
- August 5, 2023
The Bottom Line: Real-life ex-cop turned scumbag P.I. and blackmailer who pimps for a sleazy scandal sheet digs up the celebrity dirt—or buries it… Yeah, it’s Ellroy. Wear gloves.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
