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Start giftingWidespread Panic
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
Freddy is an ex-L.A. cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood - and it got to him bad. Now he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp - and, most notably, the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine.
Welcome to the world of the malevolent monarch of the Hollywood underground - a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films and strange bedfellows.
In Widespread Panic, we traverse the depths of '50s L.A. and dig on the inner workings of Confidential. You'll go to Burt Lancaster's lushly appointed torture den; you'll groove overhyped legend James Dean as Freddy's chief stooge; you'll be there for Freddy's ring-a-ding rendezvous with Liz Taylor; you'll be front and centre as Freddy anoints himself the 'Tattle Tyrant Who Held Hollywood Hostage'.
'Purgatory is rarely this much fun.' - Financial Times
© James Ellroy 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed 'L.A. Quartet': The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz. His novel Blood's A Rover completes the magisterial 'Underworld USA Trilogy' - the first two volumes of which (American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand) were both Sunday Times bestsellers. His last novel Widespread Panic received wide praise, with The Times calling it 'extraordinary'.