L.A. Despair

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