as believable as some of your worst, most confused and visceral moments.... 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.
"Biting!" Kenneth Anger, filmmaker, author
“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.
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CRAZY STEAK review by Laurel Johnson
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.
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