The year is 1962, and the world is heaving a collective sigh of relief as the nuclear showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union over Cuba has ended through diplomatic compromise. However, the enmity towards Communists and Communist sympathizers in the US has begun to heat up.

Fresh from his work as a fixer in the aftermath of Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death, Freddy Otash is working for the District Attorney’s office. Freddy, along with ambitious LAPD Lieutenant Daryl Gates, has been entrusted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy with the rooting out of subversives, especially when it comes to the Civil Rights movement. Kennedy and US Attorney Eddie Chacon believe that the Civil Rights campaign is being undermined by Communists and their fellow travelers.

"Ellroy excels at writing about the bad, compromised and corrupt, and he makes them resonate in the reader’s consciousness long after the story has concluded. The power of the pen is immovable in his hands."

Freddy has a knack for cultivating snitches who will provide the dirt on the CPUSA, especially if properly compensated. However, there appear to be stiff penalties for defectors or apostates in the organization, as Freddy learns when reading through the voluminous files kept on the seditious forces operating in and around Los Angeles. The vicious murders of a husband and wife eight years prior point to a possible hit squad operating with the sanction of the Communist hierarchy. As Freddy begins to dive deeper into the motivations and personalities of this potential fifth-column group, he discovers that ancient history is too recent for those with undying grudges.

Freddy’s investigative duties become a little more complex when he is approached by former Vice President Richard Nixon’s advisers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and asked to tail the recent gubernatorial candidate. Nixon has a predilection for taking solitary nighttime strolls with random destinations, and they are concerned that one nocturnal meandering could end badly and scuttle any future political run. Freddy begins his intelligence collection with a black-bag job on Nixon’s psychiatrist’s office. While there is potentially compromising information in these confidential files, Freddy fears that there could be a lot more after he finds the dead body of a woman who was last seen with Nixon.

Laurette Bowen’s relationship with Nixon goes back to the days when he was a red-hunting Congressman going after Communists in the US government. Her murder bears similarities in its brutality to the double homicide that Freddy unearthed in the police files. As he relates his findings to Lieutenant Gates, they realize there are criminal alliances that cross ideological divisions, and they will need to pull out all the stops to halt their machinations.

RED SHEET is the third book to chronicle the exploits of Freddy Otash, and it is engrossing from page one. There is no pretense about the kind of person Freddy is. He is a voyeur with law enforcement credentials, an amoral man whose work hours are usually fortified by a combination of pharmaceutical stimulants and booze. However, as with many of Ellroy’s antihero protagonists, he has a distinct yearning for justice and longs for redemption. He seeks atonement while committing extralegal, if not criminal, acts in order to bring down the conspirators he’s chasing.

Ellroy excels at writing about the bad, compromised and corrupt, and he makes them resonate in the reader’s consciousness long after the story has concluded. The power of the pen is immovable in his hands.