Crime Wave: A Novel

by John Stewart Wynne

Wynne’s first novel Crime Wave details the unexpected love affair between a photojournalist (Jake Adams) and a woman (Renee Cloverman) living in a Manhattan brothel. Jake attempts to make Renee respectable by moving her into the country with his aunt’s family where her presence turns out to be a risk not only for her but for them as well. It was praised by author Barbara Trapido in The Spectator as a “disturbing, well-written and impressive work whose genre is Manhattan lumpen Gothic...the book has a terrible and compelling beauty.” Author Jenny Uglow in The Times Literary Supplement wrote “Crime Wave is about personal and social sado-masochism. The author’s challenging aim is to show there is no such thing as ‘mindless violence’, whether directed towards the self or towards others. Each aggressive act is the result of a long cycle of action and reaction, continued through generations. Crime Wave is an ambitious first novel.” -- Wikipedia

203 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1982

About the author

John Stewart Wynne (aka John Wynne) is an American author of fiction. He is also a Grammy-nominated producer of spoken word recordings.

He has written the short story collections THE OTHER WORLD (originally published by City Lights; republished in 2025 by Tree Line Books) and CONSEQUENCES OF ATTRACTION (2025, Tree Line Books); and the novels CRIME WAVE (John Calder/Riverrun Press) and THE RED SHOES (originally published by Magnus Books; to be republished in February 2026 by Tree Line Books). THE RED SHOES was a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Best Gay Fiction.

The author's first published short fiction was the chapbook THE SIGHTING about which Gordon Montador in Body Politic said: "There is nothing else quite like it, for no other writer has experimented with gay experience in the context of our adolescence in straight America in such a direct, sensual and imaginative manner.” Other short fiction has appeared in HIGH RISK 2, Christopher Street, and John Calder's international NEW WRITING AND WRITERS series, among other publications. His poetry has been featured in The American Poetry Review and The Paris Review.

Starting in 2023, Tree Line Books began publishing individual ebook editions of various stories by Wynne as part of their Tree Line Story Book Series -- THE SIGHTING; LOUISE, DON'T GO; NARCISSIST; BLONDS; A NIGHT IN THE PAMPAS; THE NEEDLES HIGHWAY; AFTERNOON; and HALLOWEEN CARD.

Wynne's writing has been praised by such authors as Hubert Selby Jr., Paul Monette, Yves Navarre, James Purdy, Kate Christensen, Rebecca Brown, Rita Mae Brown, Charles Palliser, Barbara Trapido, Jenny Uglow, Stephen D. Adams, Ben Schrank, and many others.

Wynne is also the producer of over one hundred audio books. They range from William Styron reading his Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness to John Waters reading his Shock Value, and from James Patterson's Kiss the Girls to The Great Gatsby read by Christopher Reeve.

Wynne produced John Kennedy, Jr. reading his father's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage which was nominated for the Grammy Award as Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording.

Wynne served as liaison and Executive Producer with Lucasfilm for a series of Star Wars CDs, worked with Scholastic developing dramatized, multi-cast audio productions based on Ann M. Martin's The Baby-sitter's Club series, and developed a Batman series with DC Comics.

Wynne himself was nominated for a Grammy Award as producer in the Best Spoken Word Album for Children category for The Magic School Bus: Fun with Sound, featuring Lily Tomlin.

He also authored the first popular guide to spoken word recordings, THE LISTENER'S GUIDE TO AUDIO BOOKS (Simon & Schuster).