Κλειδάριθμος Πανικός

Divas, alcoholics and corrupt cops clash fiercely in 1950s Hollywood in a gritty and thrilling story. From the modern meter of noir, a novel about a sinister monarch of the Hollywood underworld in the 1950s – a story of rampant paranoia filled with communist conspiracies, FBI heists, celebrity porn, and strange matches. "I am consumed by honesty, crushed by memories. I am refreshed, reborn. My gloriously badass trip down memory lane starts NOW." Freddy Otas was the man who knew Los Angeles in the 1950s. He was the man you needed to know: a dirty cop, a dastardly private detective, extortionist, con man and, above all, the master thug of Confidential magazine. The Confidential marketed rubbish, information, obscene writing, defamation, slander. He devoured misanthropic movie stars, sex-stained worldlings, stupid politicians. Jack F. Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson—Frenzy Freddy took them all down. He was the Gossip Tyrant, holding Hollywood hostage, and now he's here to CONFESS. With Freddy's wildly entertaining voice, Panic turns 1950s Hollywood into dust. It's an all-consuming apocalypse – an apocalypse of corruption, rampant insanity, and unmitigated sin and redemption. An Ellroy at his wildest. Freddy Otas is writing his confession – and you're here to read it, you bastard. Standalone book Based on a true story. In the book we meet characters from Ellroy's earlier popular works, such as Los Angeles Confidential. They said of the book: "James Ellroy's new novel is an unabashedly retro tale of the seedy side of Hollywood." – The Washington Post “If you've been a movie star in real life and become a character in an Ellroy novel, chances are you're no longer alive to complain. His body of work is a macabre dance between fiction and reality. Panic stars Dean, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kennedy and Ingrid Bergman. – Los Angeles Times “The most Ellroy novel ever written. Highly entertaining, a book you don't forget. A character like Otas does not exist anywhere else in modern literature." ‒NPR "You come to Ellroy to wallow in blood and mud, to wallow in twists and turns and betrayals." ‒Los Angeles Times "This is a real Ellroyvision." ‒Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal "Hell is rarely this fun." ‒Financial Times "Like drinking a liter of espresso." ‒TLS "Ellroy is arguably one of the most important detective fiction writers of our time." ‒The Times James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed Los Angeles Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, Los Angeles Confidential and White Jazz. His novel The Blood Never Stops completes the formidable American Underworld Trilogy, the first two volumes of which (American Tabloid and American Death Trip) were both Sunday Times bestsellers. His previous novel, Tempest, is the second installment in Ellroy's Second Los Angeles Quartet.