Boulevard
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
A teenaged runaway fights for survival on “the boulevard of broken dreams” in this searing debut novel based on a true story.
It’s always sunny in California until you walk on the wrong side of Sunset Boulevard. And yet the bright lights still call to thousands, and every day new arrivals fill the ranks of Hollywood’s underworld of teenage runaways and hopeful stars turned hookers and strippers.
Their stories are too wretched and too sad for society’s attention, but when a high-profile lawyer is murdered at the Chateau Marmont, lackluster detective Jimmy McCann takes to the streets and finds himself enmeshed in this complex web of prostitution and drugs, learning that the killer, a young girl named Casey, is a victim in her own right. Delving into Casey’s troubled community of homeless runaways, characterized by abuse, rape, death and disease, but also by friendship, loyalty and love, Bill Guttentag has crafted a stunning literary crime novel?based on real-life incidents?that will resound with readers everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Guttentag, an Academy Award winning film director (Twin Towers), offers a moving, loosely knit crime drama about life on the streets of Hollywood in his first novel. Casey, a 15-year-old castoff from her dysfunctional family in Oregon, makes her way to the boulevards of Tinseltown to join the teeming, ever-revolving crew of runaways who get by through begging, stealing, and prostitution. One night at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel, Casey kills a high-powered, politically connected lawyer who has a sexual penchant for the young. Leading the murder investigation is LAPD detective Jimmy McCann, whose own drug-addled son also lives on the streets. Despite occasional slips into misty-eyed prose, Guttentag shows a deft touch with detail as he chronicles an existence marked by moments of sheer panic followed by hours of boredom and mundane routine. The action builds to a hopeful and satisfying conclusion.
