Jan Reid is a former senior editor at Texas Monthly and has contributed to Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health, and the New York Times. An early article about Texas music spawned his first book, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock. Among his ten books are a well-reviewed novel, Deerinwater, for which he won a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; a collection of his magazine pieces, Close Calls,</em< that was a finalist for a Texas Institute of Letters book of the year award; Rio Grande, a compilation of choice writing and photography on the storied border stream; and The Bullet Meant for Me, a reflection on marriage, friendship, boxing, and physical and emotional recovery from a deadly shooting in Mexico.
By Jane Sumner
Special to the American-Statesman
Those of us who gathered to say goodbye on the grassy slope of Republic Hill at the Texas State Cemetery on May 12, 2009, thought we’d heard the last from legendary author Edwin “Bud” Shrake. We were wrong.
Eleven years later, Shrake, dubbed “the lion of Texas letters,” has come roaring back with a crisp, wild and witty novel inspired by his real-life manic adventures as a screenwriter in 1970s and ‘80s Tinseltown.
A riveting read, Hollywood Mad Dogs is the same kind of “eyewitness fiction” as his superb incendiary novel Strange Peaches, about the right-wing hate and hysteria in Dallas before and after the Kennedy assassination.