Royal Scandal, Hollywood Crime, Nail Salon Drama: Pajiba October 2025 Book Recommendations Superpost
What Books Are You Reading This Month?
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | November 3, 2025
Widespread Panic by James Ellroy
What is everyone currently reading? I'm back on the James Ellroy train.
Yes, Ellroy has been my main literary obsession of 2025, and I don’t plan on dropping him any time soon. The demon dog of crime fiction is too juicy for me to abandon, even if he is a genuine weirdo. Widespread Panic is shockingly short by Ellroy standards—my edition was a spritely 336 pages—but certainly not sparse on detail.
The protagonist is Freddy Otash, a familiar face from Ellroy's Underworld USA series and a fascinating figure in Hollywood history. A former LAPD officer and private investigator, Otash was notorious as a fixer and researcher for the tabloid magazine Confidential. If you needed a mess cleaned up or created, you called Otash.
Most notably, he was hired by Peter Lawford to investigate Marilyn Monroe, which led to decades of conspiracies about her involvement in JFK’s life. Widespread Panic details his seedy work in the early ’50s, as he rubs shoulders and punches the faces of Tinseltown’s finest.
Where this one differs from prior Ellroy works is in its unexpected turn toward the speculative. Otash is narrating this story from purgatory, delivering a no-holds-barred monologue about his life and crimes to a hopefully forgiving higher power.
"Widespread Panic details his seedy work in the early ’50s, as he rubs shoulders and punches the faces of Tinseltown’s finest."
"Otash is narrating this story from purgatory, offering a no-holds-barred monologue of his life and crimes to a hopefully forgiving higher force."
Author’s summary: James Ellroy's Widespread Panic blends Hollywood crime and speculative narration, revealing the dark, chaotic life of fixer Freddy Otash with raw honesty and sharp intrigue.