L.A . Despair: A Landscape of Crimes & Bad Times

by John Gilmore

Overview

Legendary noir author John Gilmore takes the reader on a mad, tumultuous all-night drive without remorse or pity, through the high and low life of Hollywood and the City of Angels. This is the true-crime capstone to a celebrated collection of works, a blood-and-semen-soaked noir trail of all-night diners, nightclubs and cheap motels. Gilmore delivers a relentless panorama of sex, violence and death in five raw chronicles of SoCal sickness:

--Porn legend John Holmes and untouchable LA crime and drug impresario Eddie Nash—the unvarnished story of the sex-and-coke-laced Wonderland murders.

--Hollywood’s fallen angel Barbara Payton—hell-bent on descending from Movie Star Sexpot to the gutters of Heartbreak and Vine.

--From gorgeous jailbait Sunset Boulevard hooker to San Quentin’s gas chamber—the saga of the infamous “Ice Blonde” murderess Barbara Graham.

--Highway hitchhike-killer Billy Cook unleashes his remorseless hate for the whole human race in one of the 20th century’s most grisly crimes.

--“King of Western Swing” and early TV “Fiddlin’ Cowboy” icon Spade Cooley rides a nightmare trail of madness, paranoia and murder.

“John Gilmore is one of America’s natural-born gifts to literature. His books aren’t just inspiring and wicked by-products of genius: they’re miracles. . . . He’s the best ever.” — Gary Indiana

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013024229
Publisher:	Amok Books
Publication date:	03/18/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	339
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Described by the Sydney Morning Herald as the “quintessential L.A.
noir writer,” John Gilmore has been acclaimed internationally for his
hard-boiled true crime books, his literary fiction and Hollywood memoirs.
As one of today’s most controversial American writers, Gilmore’s
following spans the globe from Hong Kong to his native Hollywood. He
has traveled the road to fame in many guises: kid actor, stage and motion
picture player, knew James Dean and Marilyn Monroe; was a painter, poet,
screenwriter, low-budget director and novelist. After heading the writing
program at Antioch University, Gilmore taught, traveled, and lectured
extensively while producing an indelible mark in crime literature with
Severed: the True Story of the Black Dahlia, and with L.A. Despair:
A Landscape of Crimes & Bad Times. Gilmore now lives in the Hollywood Hills where he is at work on a novel, and an updated eBook edition to Inside Marilyn Monroe, and a another exploration into true crime—a memoir chronicle on the lives and death of Bonnie and Clyde.