Into the Badlands America and its Crime Writers

In the summer of 1989 John Williams embarked on an epic journey through a deeply troubled USA. A right-wing Republican administration seemed bent on rolling back the advances of the civil rights era; the Supreme Court were partially reversing the Roe vs Wade ruling on abortion; criminals from the Central Park rapist to the serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey were all over the news. Who did Williams turn to make sense of all this? America’ s crime writers – that’ s who. He talked to novelists like James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky and James Lee Burke, and visited the places they write about, like Los Angeles and Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans. The result was an instant cult classic: both an incisive and funny travelogue and a revealing guide to the lives and works of America’ s finest crime writers, caught at their peak. This updated and expanded edition includes a new afterword by the author and a foreword by acclaimed novelist David Peace.

John L Williams was born in Cardiff and now lives in London. He's written a dozen books ranging from his Cardiff Trilogy of novels to biographies of characters as diverse as Michael X and Shirley Bassey. He also writes crime fiction under the name John Lincoln. His journalism has appeared everywhere from the NME to the Financial Times. He co-organises the riotous Laugharne Weekend festival in West Wales. David Peace grew up in Yorkshire and attended Manchester Polytechnic before moving to Istanbul and subsequently to Tokyo to teach English. After returning to Britain in 2009, he moved back to Japan two years later and has been lecturing on contemporary literature at the University of Tokyo since 2011. Peace is known for his perceptive fact-based fiction. He is the author of twelve novels.