Random Acts of Badness Book

Bonaduce is primarily known for two things: costarring as red-headed Danny on TV's "The Partridge Family" from 1970 to 1974 and his downward spiral into drug addiction, culminating in his arrest for assaulting a transvestite prostitute in Arizona.

There are very few Partridge anecdotes here; instead, there are tales of a volatile, violent childhood, crack addiction, living in a car and numerous arrests and rehab attempts. Bonaduce's acerbic sense of humor, mixed with genuine contrition (he often breaks from a tale to apologize to someone) and awe that he survived such perils makes this lively, albeit episodic tour through tabloid squalor a guilty pleasure.

He's a good-natured guide who never falls into self-pity ("Before I sat down to write this book, I thought of my little stories as charming and myself as a color character... it turns out I was nothing more than a piece of shit"). His redemption comes from his wife, Gretchen, whom he met and married on the same day, and a new career as a radio disc jockey both of which turned his focus away from drugs.

While Bonaduce's nice-guy persona helps him to avoid alienating readers with the seedier incidents, he skims over his actual recovery from crack cocaine (willpower, on-the-job drug tests and his wife's eagle eye is his explanation, which seems a little too easy). He is forthcoming on his various brushes with the law, his boxing match with Donny Osmond, his often humiliating radio jobs (one station required him to call himself "Danny Partridge") and his belief that all child stars don't have to meet a bad end.