Crazy Streak by John Gilmore 192 pgs. 5″x8″ $12.95 ISBN: 0-9764035-1-X

About the Book

CRAZY STREAK is a twisted excursion into seething sexuality, desperate alienation, incest and conscienceless violence; a book destined to be as controversial as Nabokov’s “Lolita.”
The wreck that really begins the novel is also what ends it. Long past the settling of steel and rubber, the bodies and brains of the travelers are beaten and twisted by hate, lust, booze and the sick heat of the Southern California desert wasteland.
This story is brutal in its realism. No fairy-tale romance or overly convoluted plots needed. It’s not ironic or kitschy; it’s certainly not begging to be loved.
CRAZY STREAK is as believable as some of your worst, most confused and visceral moments.

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 Crazy Streak by John Gilmore – Paperbound $12.95 + S/H

About the Author

Acclaimed internationally for his literary fiction, his hard-boiled true crime books and Hollywood memoirs, John Gilmore has a following that spans the globe from Hong Kong to Hollywood. He is the author of Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip, Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder, Manson: The Unholy Trial of Charlie and His Family, and others.

“John Gilmore is one of America’s natural-born gifts to literature. His books aren’t just wicked and inspiring by-products of genius: they’re miracles. I don’t know how he keeps telling the truth of things when so much of our mental landscape is shrouded in darkness and stupidity. I adore him. He’s the best ever.”
– Gary Indiana.

“John Gilmore is one of the best nonfiction writers of our time, the type of writer that grabs the reader alternately by the throat and by the heart. The stories he tells in this, his first book of memoirs tell tales of broken hearts, broken dreams and broken lives. John Gilmore has crossed paths with the famous and the infamous and while
some have walked away with their lives and souls intact, most have been carried off by anger and death, we should feel fortunate that John Gilmore has remained behind to tell his stories.”
– Maximum Rock’n’Roll

He is the author of:
SEVERED: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder
LIVE FAST-DIE YOUNG: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean
MANSON: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family
LAID BARE: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip
FETISH BLONDE
COLD-BLOODED: The Saga of Charles Schmid

Reviews

“With a number of books under his belt, John Gilmore returns with his latest effort Crazy Streak, a story of one man’s journey back home after a stint in the army where he was stationed in a no mans land deep in the heart of Texas. Back in his native California, Bobby McGee comes across friends he grew up with and old loves. In the midst of it all, he meets Jo, his ex-girlfriend Pam’s young cousin who’s barely into her teens. Every guy in town seems to want a piece of her. After Pam’s death in a nasty drug and alcohol fueled car accident, Bobby and Jo become inextricably linked; a passion that begins within the eye of a storm. While his obsession with the young teen remains the heart of the story, McGee is burdened by his past. Already in his early 20′s, his life has taken turns that no one should go. A life of sexual abuse, emotional and mental neglect, alcoholism; the list goes on. Gilmore’s portrayal of his characters, from the sleazy pastor to McGee’s alcoholic brother, jumps off the pages and places you right alongside them. You become a part of McGee’s Crazy Streak up until the point …I don’t want to ruin it for you but you’ll feel as if you’re a part of McGee’s conscience. Let’s just hope you would make the right decisions.”
–Ghettoblaster Magazine

“John Gilmore has been recognized for decades for his unsettling exposes and noir prose. One critic dubbed him “the literary Hannibal Lecter.” For certain, Gilmore sets his scenes masterfully while zeroing in on human lusts and frailties. His work is often shocking but always well written. Characters are so sharply drawn we walk in their skins.
Bobby McGee is fresh out of the Army, hoping for a new start away from his dreary hometown in the California desert. The father who terrorized him in his boyhood is now an incontinent vegetable, cared for at home by Bobby’s mother. His mother is still young and attractive, plotting her escape from suffocating circumstances. Bobby’s brother, Woody, strung out on drugs and alcohol, is often unpredictable and dangerous. The woman who loves Bobby is now fat, hooked up unofficially with his best friend, Clyde, the Mayor’s son. His first day back, a car wreck throws Bobby together with Jo, a seductive 13-year-old nymphet.
Bobby’s friends all know he’s always had a crazy streak, but his sexual obsession for Jo is out of character for him. After the accident one friend is dead and another nearly so, but Bobby’s life revolves around his insatiable lust for Jo.
And Jo may not be the innocent child she seems to be at first. Law enforcement officers investigating the accident are determined to protect Clyde. Bribery escalates to incest, and then murder. And as a backdrop Gilmore drags readers into the heat, dust,and misery of small town life. As one character tells Bobby, “People are all sons a bitches when you peel the hide off.”
John Gilmore is a VERY good writer. His characters and subjects may be dark, but his prose is exceptional.”
Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review

“Biting!”
Kenneth Anger, filmmaker, author

“CRAZY STREAK paints a crumbling American dream warped with individual turmoil and dangerous sexual obsession. Gilmore’s
provoking characters, sans a sense of retribution, populate this decaying, throw-away California desert town set against High Sierras where his protagonist breaks from his suffocation as in a holy act of self-destruction, rising lawlessly above a conscience—or retribution. A tragic story overflowing with violence and intense, graphic, illegal sex fused with criminal indulgence. Here is a desperate and relentless people in a relentless novel bound to shatter long-held sacred literary traditions.”
Lawrence Grobel, author of Conversations with Brando; The Hustons; Conversations with Capote; Talking with Michener; Endangered Spices: Writers Talk about Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives; and other books. Grobel was celebrity interviewer for Playboy magazine for many years.

“A dark, powerful, work that knocks you out of your socks. CRAZY STREAK pops our nightmares like boils and sucks our
dreaded desires to the surface.
John Gilmore’s teenybopper heroine who is a pedophile’s calendar girl, leaves Lolita in the star dust of a skyrocket ride few would dare to take.
This book blows the lid off the mediocrity passing as today’s so-called literature.”
Nick Zedd, author of Totem of the Depraved, and From Entropy to Ecstasy.