The Bitch
~ Les Edgerton
- Title: The Bitch
- Author: Les Edgerton
- Genre: Crime Noir
- Format: Kindle
- Source: Netgalley
- Reviewed by: Mark Matthews
- Rating: 5 out of 5
Description:
Ex-con Jake Bishop is several years past his second stint in prison and has
completely reformed. He’s married, expecting a child, and preparing to open his
own hair salon. But then an old cellmate re-enters his life begging for a
favor: to help him with a burglary. Forced by his code of ethics to perform the
crime, Jake’s once idyllic life quickly plunges into an abyss. Jake soon
realizes that there is only one way out of this purgatory . . . and it may
rupture his soul beyond repair.
Review: First off, I should note that the title “The Bitch” is in reference to the main character’s fear of being labeled a “Ha-Bitch-ual” criminal. More on that later.
Review: First off, I should note that the title “The Bitch” is in reference to the main character’s fear of being labeled a “Ha-Bitch-ual” criminal. More on that later.
Ex-con
trying to fly straight and be a family man gets called back into the lifestyle.
Sure, you may have seen this done before: But this author does it so well
that it never gets trite. Feels like true crime, with a language that is never
forced.
The
tension escalated beautifully. Unpredictable, yet always getting higher, like
the tick, tick, ticking noise you hear the roller coaster make as you climb
that first hill. You weren’t sure what twist it was going to take, only that
the author showed so much skill you would trust it would be somewhere
interesting. You get to know the main character so well, that it’s hard not to
take him out of the book and back home with you.
As far as
the title referring to the legal implications of being labeled a “Ha-Bitch-ual”
criminal, I don’t think the author would mind you thinking otherwise. In some
ways, the main character lets his past make him his bitch, so to speak, by
trying to live by the code of his old world and be happy in the new. Likewise,
his wife, tries a ‘cross-over’ with similar results. There is moral ambiguity
here and a value system that the main character has that you don’t have to
admire, but you will certainly feel it along the way. As the main character,
Jake, goes rifling through what to do next, you want to scream out to him,
“Dude, did you realize you just ((spoiler alert)) how are you going to shoot a
move through this one?”
I have to
believe that crime fiction speaks to the voyeur in all of us. The part who want
to know how criminals live and what they think. And the best crime fiction
makes us realize they are one of us, or we are one of them. We find ourselves
identifying with the character at some parts, wishing they had more of a moral compass
at other parts. We may get disgusted at their choices, other times we may just
wish they’d be more slick and get away with it. All of these things and more
crossed my mind as I committed crimes alongside Jake and Walker.
Read this
for the story, for the plot, for the characters, and for the concise as a
concrete slab prose. If you are lucky like me, you can read it at your parents
cottage, isolated, surrounded by snow, which was exactly the setting the
characters found themselves in as they tried to cover the tracks of their
misdeeds. I was able to go home and live happily ever after with my family. The
characters of this book may have not been so lucky.
Thanks, Mark--tickled pink that you enjoyed the read!
Blue skies,
Les
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