Death Row Breakout brings together seven previously unseen short stories that draw fully on Edward Bunker's incomparable experience of the U.S. prison system.
The title story Death Row Breakout details the routine of being on Death Row, before exploding into action when the plans for a breakout kick in. In L.A. Justice, a black man falls foul of the law after a minor traffic incident and once inside the prison system he finds it a labyrinth impossible to escape from... As James Ellroy says `by an ex-criminal, from the unregenerately criminal viewpoint...'
'I don´t know if any politicians read Bunker. But they should.'
- Cathi Unsworth, The Guardian [read the full review]
Ed Bunker, who died in 2005, was a walking history of 20th century America. The son of a Busby Berkeley dancer, he became the youngest inmate of San Quentin at the age of 17. Befriended by actress Louise Wallis, he spent the next 20 years either incarcerated or mixing with the LA elite. In the Sixties he sold drugs to the Manson girls. In the Seventies he finally wrote his way out of jail with No Beast So Fierce, which opened Hollywood´s doors. In the nineties he appeared in the zeitgeist defining Reservoir Dogs. Always, he was writing - exposing the dehumanising prison system that is the American Nightmare. This short story collection forms a larger history of `Dracula´s Lair´ - San Quentin. From the sheer bad luck that lands young Booker Johnston there in 1927, through the revolutionary Sixties to caged serial killers in the Nineties, Bunker describes a process which breeds greater violence and alienation as it grows more authoritarian. Crucially, the only man who survived to tell us the tale never lost his humanity - as desperado Roger Harper reflects in the title story: 'To understand all is to forgive all.' I don´t know if any politicians read Bunker. But they should.
Cathi Unsworth, The Guardian
'Integrity, craftsmanship and moral passion...an artist with a unique and compelling voice'
- William Styron
'Edward Bunker is a true original of American letters. His books are criminal classics: novels about criminals, written by an ex-criminal, from the unregenerately criminal viewpoint.'
- James Ellroy
'At 40 Eddie Bunker was a hardened criminal with a substantial prison record. Twenty-five years later, he was hailed by his peers as America's greatest living crimewriter'
- The Independent