Indeed, though there is plenty of interest in the plot of Panic in a Suitcase, which follows two generations of a Ukrainian family as they immigrate - or don’t - to Brooklyn, Akhtiorskaya’s glorious, hilarious prose is very clearly the star of the show. But perhaps the most telling endorsement comes from the writer Aleksandar Hemon, who selected Akhtiorskaya for the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” award: “I’d read a take-out menu written by Yelena Akhtiorskaya,” he writes. Much excitement has been generated recently about a young writer named Yelena Akhtiorskaya ’09SOA and her debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase, which the New York Times named one of its hundred best books of the year.
We peep, prowl, break, enter, SEEK.Brighton Beach boardwalk, February 1992. We seek succor in the scent of secret lives, half hidden. Our genus genuflects at moon fall and comes alive at nite. However, he's smart enough to recognize the nature of his business and his own: "I'm a Pervdog. He's constantly looking for dirt on everyone and setting up bugs in houses and motel rooms across LA, but in his mind, he's a legend, he's Freon Freddy, the Shaman of Shakedown, the Tattle Tyrant Who Holds Hollywood Hostage, the Freewheeling Freedy O. This seedy summit set the tone for the frazzled and fractured frisson that is our nation today."īesides his memorable voice, Otash is, surprisingly, a likeable character. It's a colossal convergence of the gilded and gorgeous, the defiled and demented, the lurid and the low-down. "It's the egalitarian epicenter of postwar America.
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Here's how Otash describes the scene of a porn movie premier for Hollywood movers and shakers:
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It also contextualizes 1950s Hollyweird in full sin-emascope and nails the political gestalt of the decade, especially in LA. Fast, snappy, and with a level of alliteration that dances between the brilliant and the ridiculous, Otash's voice is unlike anything else in contemporary fiction. There are many superb elements here, but Otash's voice is what makes Widespread Panic wildly entertaining and memorable. More than a single plot, Widespread Panic packs the most important events Otash was involved in, exposing the best and worst of his life in a rhizomatic, paranoid tale that blends fact and fiction while exposing the darkest dealings of the magazine, the Hollywood elite, the FBI, and the LAPD.įast, snappy, and with a level of alliteration that dances between the brilliant and the ridiculous, Otash's voice is unlike anything else in contemporary fiction. Ellroy brings them all to the page with a unique voice and mashes them into an uproarious, hyperviolent, sleazy narrative about Reds, feds, drugs, panty raids, dirty movies, secret rendezvouses, political turmoil, and shady pasts. Kennedy, Liz Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Alfred Hitchcock, and James Dean, to name a few.
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"Baby, it's time to CONFESS." Thus begins Otash's recount of his time with Confidential and the series of people he interacted with, knew dark secrets about, protected, and blackmailed, and it's an impressive list: Paul Newman, Ava Gardner, Marlon Brando, Senator John F. Movie Interviews Watch This: Crime Writer James Ellroy Recommends - What Else? - Noir Films
Otash was running the show, and Widespread Panic chronicles his rise and eventual fall as he becomes an informant while following a series of plots that include finding Rock Hudson a fake wife to hide his homosexuality and covering Kennedy's misdeeds to protect his political career. Kennedy.Ĭonfidential was the premier scandalous rag of its time, and appearing on its pages was a nightmare for many celebrities and politicians. An ex-cop who became a private investigator and then quickly morphed into the beating heart of Confidential magazine, Otash had Hollywood in his pocket and was involved in secrets, rackets, and blackmail with everyone from James Dean - who worked for him for a while - to Senator John F.
And that was in real life, not just in Ellroy's fictionalized account of Otash's escapades, which including having an (in)famous photo of Marlon Brando in a very compromising position. In 1950's LA, Freddy Otash was the man to know and the man who knew it all, and he had photos and audio of everything. James Ellroy's Widespread Panic is quintessential Ellroy, but with enough alliteration, Hollyweird flavor, booze, distressed damsels, communist conspiracies, and extortion to make this the most Ellroy novel he's ever written. The Demon Dog of Crime Fiction is back, and this time around it's more boocoo bad business, crooked cops, pervs, prowlers, and putzo politicians than ever, and that's saying a lot.
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