To Wreak Havoc on American History: James Ellroy’s Red Sheet
October 1962. Fred Otash is freewheeling around Los Angeles. Once a police officer, latterly ‘Private Eye to the Stars’, Otash finds himself back on the side of the Angels, if you can say that about law enforcement in Ellroy’s work, as he assigned with the LAPD on an investigation into communist influence in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Of course, in Ellroy’s fiction every action has multiple hidden motivations. The Kennedy brothers have ordered the red probe to distract attention away from their complicity in the premature death of Marilyn Monroe. Otash’s involvement in that sordid saga was the basis of Ellroy’s previous novel The Enchanters.
In Red Sheet, Otash finds himself typically overstretched. Richard Nixon’s ill-fated gubernatorial campaign is winding down and Otash is tasked to keep an eye on Tricky Dicky, whose nocturnal wanderings are making his lieutenants – Bob Haldemann and John Ehrlichman – nervous, particularly after he is seen visiting a woman on Halloween night who is shortly thereafter found murdered. On top of that, Otash suspects the death of the woman is tied to the murder of two communist informers, and he begins to unravel a web of intrigue that goes back to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War and the Cristero rebellion in Mexico.
This is the convoluted nature of Red Sheet. That I have barely scratched the surface of its labyrinthine narrative in the synopsis above, proves that for an author in his late seventies, Ellroy is not lacking in ambition and scope. Regardless, in recent years a weariness has kicked in when reading Ellroy as it feels that he has said it all before. Novels such as Perfidia and This Storm, part of the prequel Los Angeles Quartet that Ellroy abandoned in favour of his more recent Otash novels, hammered readers with the relentless telegraphic prose style that began to overwhelm characterisation and dialogue.
Any appraisal of a new Ellroy novel must address whether it is a return to form of his classic period (broadly from The Black Dahlia to The Cold Six Thousand) or is it more plodding down the path of idiosyncrasies that have made reading his recent work more of a challenging proposition. As Ellroy’s biographer and someone who has spent a lot of time with him, I can attest to Ellroy’s obsessiveness and the obsession he inspires in his readers. Don’t get me wrong, he can be kind and generous too, but readers and critics are not drawn to him for these qualities. From the writer whose mother was murdered when he was ten years old (the case is still unsolved), and whose father was Rita Hayworth’s business manager (he organised Hayworth’s wedding to Prince Aly Khan), we have come to expect a more visceral intensity in his writing, especially on his dual obsessions of Hollywood and politics and their intersection. The good news is that Red Sheet delivers the goods on that score. In terms of a gripping plot, a well-paced unfolding mystery and sheer page-turning entertainment, Ellroy is a master and it shows here. The novel’s key flaw is a lack of snappy dialogue. The prose is as jazzy as ever, but when characters converse Ellroy falls back into a mode of speechifying that stifles the overall atmosphere. Nevertheless, Red Sheet is an impressive and accomplished addition to the genre, and it’s always good to have Ellroy, through Fred Otash, wreak such havoc on American history.
This review has been cross-posted on Shots Magazine. You can also check out my video review of Red Sheet on YouTube show Ellroy Reads.
The Venetian Vase 
Great review Steven. I see your points. When thinking of it, I’m amazed how easy it was for me to follow the story. Given it’s almost as white hot feverish as White Jazz and a narrative almost as absurdley wide as This storm’s. The Dramatis personae alone almost put the fear of book reading into a work colleague I showed it too haha. –no worries, I suggested him to start with Dahlia, Confidential, Places and/or Tabloid 🙂
Here’s a review I’ve also posted on your youtube vid: If The Enchanters unearthed it’s heart in a woman’s revenge and a man’s hope for atonement Red sheet brings a super powered chainsaw to a hammer and sickle fight. Bitten off noses and exploding plastic faces followed by Freddy recieving a pack of cookies by them’s moma for the trouble of killing her satanic mf sons. It’s not often I’ve read something as complex, absurd and entertaining. If I was to compare Red Sheet to a music album (I liken American Tabloid to RS:s Exile On Main Street, their best) it’d be Iggy Pop’s 2023 Every Looser. An album which pitchfork described as Pop as ” an outsider even when he’s inside, and still game to burn it all down from within.”
I’m very impressed with how this book manages to be both a functioning and thematic sequel to both Perfidia/This storm as well as an direct sequel to Enchanters (and to a degree Widespread panic) while also stand on it’s own legs. And it does it without the usual info dump chapters early on. –
One thing which really came together for me was how it set up a rise and fall of a working economical system with the gold notes value speculation, bit like the war profiteering in Perfidia and This Storm’s gold fever. I’d almost argue the “F-deck” in Enchanters does this as well, though without the devil’s pact angle (or perhaps “drive”?) of the other three books. I found this to be a very interesting aspect of the (now) quintet. I’m hoping the next book continues thread this with the opening of the Dodgers stadium. I’ve a feeling a thread or two could connect back to both WW2 and the quintet regarding this. I was really hoping to see the likes of EV Jackson and others to return, but I really liked the return Charles Lindbergh as well as the addition of Tom Bradley. Bradley especially. His chapter was nicely written, sympathetic yet tragic. Also continuing the many tragedies connected to the change in L.A demographics.
Another new character who stood out for me was Dorothy J Siemers. She almost felt like DLS at times. Not just the dum-dum bullets and a secret closet of fascist uniforms. A very commanding presence. Charming and dangerous. She also has this sad hardened quality about her which I like. I buy her varying alliances.
I wish Judy Henske had a bit more to do, I mainly read her as a dream girl friend JE wanted to write about. Apperantly he dug her alot as a kid. Felt more like a prelude to what’s next. That said, Judy is fun and cute. I like her, just not as much as Otash does (perhaps in the next book?). Same goes for Nixon, who also didn’t appear that much either, but just enough to warrant it. Little lynchpins rather than the actual wheels of either stories, not the grenade pins I was expecting.
A strong 4 bitten off noses out of 5.
Great review Carl. The Ellroy-speak is essential to understanding the novel. If people don’t get it, then they’re not going to understand Red Sheet.