Review
‘Rawley has an uncanny knack for making the bizarre beautiful and for capturing the pathos and peculiar dignity of characters who wouldn’t normally command respect. He achieves an emotional and tonal range that’s extremely impressive.’
Christina Patterson, Observer
‘Hollywood… is the setting for these vital, explosive short stories. Rawley’s characters live life on the edge, from True Romance-style, drug-fuelled teenagers to faded Twenties starlets, living alone. Norma Desmond-like, in their decaying mansions. Rawley’s language is lush – he’s an acclaimed poet – and every word is made to count. Essential reading.’
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‘Rawley writes prose with real poetry in it’
Scott Bradfield, Mail on Sunday
Product Description
A noirish Hollywood murder mystery, from the acclaimed author of Slow Dance on the Fault Line
A Hollywood screenwriter is brought to write up the grisly murder of a middle-aged, unmarried, unremarkable movie studio secretary whose vile demise is scarcely in keeping with her life…
Vulgar B-movie producers, druggie airhead pin-ups, fading celebs, Hollywood wives, vicious latino maids, laconic huslters – all are here, in abundance.
From the Back Cover
When a quiet, anonymous young woman is murdered with awful precision in her quiet, anonymous Hollywood apartment, it comes as no surprise that within hours a film deal has been struck and a screenplay commissioned. For sensitive journeyman writer Samuel Johnson, it is the chance to finally work with successful producer Sol Seagull and to contribute, in a small way, to the Hollywood dream. But in taking the job, Samuel finds himself reluctantly drawn into a twilight world where amidst the scramble to secure rights to her tragic story, the only person who seems to have cared about plain, overweight Kathi Kind is her murderer
"Donald Rawley's first novel, 'The End of Miss Kind', is a sad pleasure to read. Sad because it is published posthumously and there will be no further novels from this most talented of writers. To master poetry, then the art of the short story – both 'Slow Dance on the Fault Line' and 'The Night Bird cantata' are collections of wistful brilliance – is one thing, but to follow these with a classy, and even classic, novel borders on genius… Rawley's eye for detail is impeccable, but his great talent here is telling a tale of ambition, deceit, manipulation and fading glamour with a genuinely original wit."
SEBASTIAN BEAUMONT, 'Gay Times'
"In a novel populated by sharks, Donald Rawley takes on Hollywood as only a poet can. His prose is tight and fluent and he creates a convincing noir atmosphere with ease… Tragically, this was Rawley's last work of fiction, but it stands as testament to a man with great integrity and considerable talent."
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About the Author
Donald Rawley was the author of five books of award-winning poetry, a book of short stories, Slow Dance on the Fault Line and a novella, The Night Bird Cantata. He died in 1998, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of forty.
