Back to the Badlands by John Williams
In the summer of 1989 John Williams donned a baseball cap and took off for the States to search out the mythical America of modern crime fiction ? to find James Ellroy?s LA, Elmore Leonard?s sleazy South Beach of Miami, Sara Paretsky?s Chicago, and many others on an unnerving tour of the American underbelly. The result was Into the Badlands, a riveting collection of interviews that introduced a generation of crime fans to now legendary writers. In 2005 Williams returned to discover that much had changed in the intervening years, both in crime writing and in America as a whole. As Williams crosses America in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he finds himself in a profoundly uneasy country. Whether their territory is inner-city DC, like George Pelecanos, or the rural white poverty of the Ozark Hills, like Daniel Woodrell, the best crime writers today are sending despatches from the edge. John Williams brings their visions together to construct a powerful, personal portrait of America today.
'A vital mixture of literary criticism, personality profiles and imaginary geography? New Statesman 'An acute journey, alive with the stark and the surreal? GQ ?A gazetteer of American noir? Daily Telegraph ?Vital sociological and moral comment? Patricia Highsmith ?A powerful and personal portrait of America today? Big Issue
John Williams was born in Cardiff in 1961.He wrote a punk fanzine and played in bands before moving to London and becoming a journalist , writing for everyone for The Face to the Financial Times. He wrote his first book, an American crime fiction travelogue called Into The Badlands (Paladin) in 1991. His next book, Bloody Valentine (HarperCollins), written around the Lynette White murder case in the Cardiff docks, came out in 1994. Following a subsequent libel action from the police, he turned to fiction. His first novel the London-set Faithless (Serpent's Tail) came out in 1997. Shortly afterward he moved back to Cardiff, with his family, and has now written four novels set in his hometown - Five Pubs, Two Bars And A Nightclub (Bloomsbury 1999); Cardiff Dead (Bloomsbury 2000); The Prince Of Wales (Bloomsbury 2003) and Temperance Town (Bloomsbury 2004). He has edited an anthology of new Welsh fiction, Wales Half Welsh (Bloomsbury 2004). He also writes screenplays (his ninety-minute drama, A Light In The City, was shown by BBC Wales in 2001). An omnibus edition of his Cardiff novels, The Cardiff Trilogy, is to be published by Bloomsbury in summer 2006.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852429218 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852429216 |
| Title | Back to the Badlands |
| Author | John Williams |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Profile Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2006-10-16 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |