Tour 2026
RED SHEET U.S. TOUR DATES!!!!!
Red Sheet is an anti-communist novel. It stands foursquare in the tainted tradition of Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane. Ellroy is out to scramble your long-held perceptions and force you into a state of jumped-up disavowal.
Red Sheet scorns the mock-martyred Hollywood Ten and ballyhoos the Blacklist and the ’47-’48 HUAC hearings. Red Sheet forces you to live within the twisted and oddly tender soul of Richard M. Nixon. Red Sheet spotlights the Spanish Civil War and atrocities committed by the commie-infested International Brigade, heretofore held as heroic. Red Sheet lionizes name-naming kingpin Whittaker Chambers and bestows kudos on ratfinks Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg.
Check back for more to come. Catch me if you can!!!!!
Monday, June 8th
Warwick's, La Jolla
7:30 p.m. Details
Tuesday, June 9th
Chevalier's, Los Angeles
7 p.m. Details
Wednesday, June 10th
Vroman's, Pasadena
7 p.m. Details
Thursday, June 11th
Book Passage, Corte Madera
6 p.m. In store and online. Details
Friday, June 12th
Kepler's Books, Menlo Park
7 p.m. Details
Saturday, June 13th
L.A. Conservancy "Last Remaining Seats" Series, Los Angeles.
5 p.m. Lecture "James Ellroy Rashly Revises America’s So-Called Red Scare." Details
6 p.m. Book-signing in the theater lobby.
7:15 p.m. Introduce L.A. CONFIDENTIAL onstage. Details
Thursday, June 18th
Tattered Cover Colfax, Denver
6 p.m.
Monday, June 22nd
92nd St. Y, New York City
7:30 p.m. Live and streaming. Details
Wednesday, June 24th
Andover, MA
5:30 p.m. Book event hosted by The Andover Shop.
Bossman Ellroy buys all his swinging Ivy League threads here!!!!!
Red Sheet
A Novel
ON SALE JUNE 9, 2026 FROM ALFRED A. KNOPF
Turn to the first page. Disavow what you think you know about the so-called Red Scare. This is commie malfeasance and ’60s L.A. as you’ve never read it before.
It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from seething commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.
Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead investigating officer. He’s a stone-cold criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a murder on Halloween night. It may link to ex-VP and current gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and two commie snuffs from eight years back. Freddy’s overworked and overamped. He’s running the probe, and Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman—Tricky Dick Nixon’s head goons—have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press.
L.A. is coming unglued. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for a city council seat and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride, out to exploit racial tension and peddle untold copies of his smut rag.
Red Sheet is James Ellroy’s most crazed kamikaze run and a daring, subversive work of fiction.