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 stopping anytime soon. The demon dog of crime fiction is too captivating for me to abandon, even if he is a genuine weirdo.

Widespread Panic is surprisingly short by Ellroy’s standards—my edition was a brisk 336 pages—but it is certainly rich in detail.

The Story and Protagonist

The protagonist is Freddy Otash, a familiar face from Ellroy’s Underworld USA series and an intriguing figure in Hollywood history. A former LAPD officer and private investigator, Otash was infamous as a fixer and researcher for the tabloid magazine Confidential. If you needed a mess cleaned up or created, Otash was the man to call.

Most notably, he was hired by Peter Lawford to investigate Marilyn Monroe, a task that sparked decades of conspiracy theories about her connections to JFK’s life.

Plot and Style

Widespread Panic chronicles Otash’s sordid crusades in the early 1950s, as he mingles with and confronts Tinseltown’s most notorious figures.

This book differs from Ellroy’s previous works by adding a speculative twist: Otash narrates from purgatory, delivering a raw and unforgiving monologue about his life and crimes to a potentially merciful higher power.

"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: Kayleigh Donaldson remains captivated by Ellroy’s sharp, compact narrative in Widespread Panic as it blends true crime with Hollywood lore through the eyes of a notorious fixer.

Pajiba — 2025-11-04