Back to the Badlands: Crime Writing in the USA - Softcover

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 from The Face to the Financial Times. His novels include Bloody Valentine, the London-set Faithless, and The Cardiff Trilogy. He now lives in Cardiff with his family.

*Starred Review* In 1989, Welsh mystery writer Williams (The Cardiff Trilogy) combined travel memoir and crime-fiction criticism into a beguiling little book called nto the Badlands. Playing the role of a hard-boiled De Tocqueville, he traveled about the U.S., interviewing his favorite crime writers (Leonard, Hiaasen, Ellroy, among them) and visiting the cities in which they set their books. He returned to the U.S. in 2003 and repeated the process with a new group of writers, mainly less mainstream authors of the kind who turn up on the favorites list of anyone who favors edgy, noir-tinged crime writing (Daniel Woodrell, Vicki Hendricks, Kem Nunn). In addition to the new material, this volume includes several of the essays from the original; rather than seeming like filler, though, the older chapters work in concert with the newer to provide a perfect cross section of hard-boiled crime writing, tailored not to the casual reader but to the connoisseur. And the countercultural edge Williams brings to his travel commentary works, too, not because we need to be told that gentrification ruins a good mystery setting but because his observations are always made with self-deprecating humor ("People like me end up spending our time complaining about how much better things used to be before people like me showed up and ruined them"). Best of all, though, is Williams' taste in writers: Gar Anthony Haywood, Jesse Sublett, and Terrill Lankford aren't household names, but if you love hard-boiled fiction, they are names you know, and people you'd like to know better. Bill Ott
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