THE RAPIST cover!

Hi folks,

I'm really... I mean... REALLY jazzed! Jon Bassoff, my publisher at New Pulp Press has just sent me the cover for my nihilistic novel, THE RAPIST, and it's just gorgeous! Take a look and see what you think. (Just click on it to enlarge it.)

The publication date is March 20, 2013, but it may be offered early in a pre-pub sale. I'll keep you informed.

This novel is the best work I've ever done and I'm extremely proud of it. I cannot wait to have a copy in my hot little hand! It'll come out as a paperback and an ebook.

Please keep it in mind next spring when it's available!

Blue skies,
Les

P.S. Here are some of the other blurbs that will appear in the novel. Also, Cort McMeel is writing the forward for it. Cort was the initial champion for it and has a lot to do with it getting into the right hands and published.

Other blurbs:

BLURBS FOR THE RAPIST

1. Les Edgerton presents an utterly convincing anti-hero. The abnormal psychology is pitch-perfect. The Rapist ranks right up there with Camus' The Stranger and Simenon's Dirty Snow. An instant modern classic.

Allan Guthrie, author of Slammer and others. Publisher, Blasted Heath Books

2. So, I’m reading Les Edgerton’s The Rapist. The title has already made me uneasy.

Five pages in and I can hardly breathe.

Ten and I’m nauseous.

For the next 50, I’m a mixture of all of the above, but most of all, angry.

I feel like ringing my feminist friends and confessing: Sisters, I’m reading something you will kill me for reading.

I feel like ringing my ex colleagues - parole officers and psychologists who work with sex offenders in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow - and asking them if they think it’s helpful to publish an honest and explicit transcript which shows the cognitive distortions of a callous, grandiose, articulate sex offender; one which illustrates his inability to have a relationship with a woman and his complete lack of empathy?

I’m thinking I don’t know what I should be thinking.

Will it turn sex offenders on?

Should we listen to this guy?

Is it possible to separate the person from the offence, and to empathise with him as he waits to die?

I don’t ring anyone.

I read on.

And the breathlessness, nausea, anger and confusion increase all the way to the end, at which point all I know is that the book is genius.

Helen Fitzgerald, author, Dead Lovely, Bloody Women, The Devil’s Staircase, Donor and others.

3. Take a Nabokovian narrator trying to convince the reader of his innocence and filter it through An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and you've got The Rapist, a raw and frightening journey through the inner psyche of a damaged man.

Brian Lindenmuth, Publisher, Spinetingler Magazine and Snubnose Press

4. One never knows what to expect when reading a novel entitled “The Rapist,” yet, similar to “The Bitch” which precedes this, with Les Edgerton you know you're in for an interesting ride. Tackling a tough subject with great aplomb, Les Edgerton proves once again why he is one of the most exciting writers of this generation. The structure of this just astounded me. I've never read anything like it before. I've never been so engrossed in a novel as I was with this one. I had no idea Edgerton had this literary part of his writing. I don't know of any other writers that can go from crime fiction to literary so seamlessly. Edgerton should be very proud of this novel...

One of the bravest pieces of fiction you are likely to read this year, and also one of the best. This is a novel you'll want to read again and again, an outstanding read!

Luca Veste, author of the story collections Liverpool 5, and More Liverpool Five. He is also the editor of the story collection, Off the Record

5. The Rapist blends Camus and Jim Thompson in an existential crime novel that is as dark and intoxicating as strong Irish coffee. Les Edgerton pulls us into the corkscrew mind of Truman Ferris Pinter, a twisted man with skewed perception of the world, as his life spirals toward oblivion, like dirty dishwater down a plughole. It reminded me of Jim Thompson's Savage Night in its delirium.

Paul D Brazill, Author, 13 Shots Of Noir and others.

6. Les Edgerton’s book The Rapist is Albert Camus’ The Stranger retold as if by the lovechild of Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Bukowski. Yes, it’s disturbing, yet layered and provocative, with its combination of mysticism and perversion. I particularly like the cat and mouse relationship between the protagonist Truman and the prison warden—it’s reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption. This tale, with its many twists and turns, is definitely not for the faint of heart—but then, the title should have made that clear.

Scott Evans, Editor, Blue Moon Literary and Art Review, Author, First Folio

7. William Faulkner on steroids or Hannibal Lecter on meth; neither as literate or frightening as Les Edgerton in his ground-breaking novel, The Rapist. This intellectual tour-de-force rips open the mind of a delusional psychopath taking the reader on a raw journey that challenges Dante’s Inferno. And the last line of the book is the penultimate example of a sociopath’s naked ego.

R.C. Stewart, author of The Blackness of Darkness, No Remorse and others.

8. A deathdream swan dive from the existential stratosphere plummeting into the personal hell of a tormented, broken psyche, The Rapist introduces us to a gentle and philosophical misanthrope named Truman Pinter, at once reminiscent of Albert Camus and Patricia Highsmith, even John Gardner’s Grendel and the journal of Carl Panzram. Les Edgerton melds introspection and visceral, human brutality in this death row narrative from a masterful storyteller, whose dissection of a psychopath will haunt you long after the final page.

Thomas Pluck, Well-known commentator on the noir scene, many short stories published in magazines such as the Utne Reader, Editor of the anthology, THE PROTECTOR.

9. The Rapist is a disturbing look into the twisted mind of a narcissistic psychopath on death row. A vulgar odyssey reminiscent of Nabokov’s Lolita, although far more depraved, Les Edgerton has crafted a dark and brilliant story that leaves you as equally unsettled as it does in complete awe.

Julia Madeleine, author of No One To Hear You Scream and The Truth About Scarlet Rose

10. When Les Edgerton asked me to read an ARC of “The Rapist” he warned me with that title it may not be my thing and he was okay with whatever I decided. I knew of his writing books like Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go and Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing  but never had looked at any of his fiction. I was prepared for something graphic but he refused to talk about the plot or storyline. No hints.

I was ready to be offended. I’m a strong advocate for women’s equality and won’t tolerate or put my name near anything that belittles woman.  With a title of “The Rapist” it had two and a half strikes before I read the first line because rape is all about a man having power over a woman.

From the first pages the words and voice made me think of American literature masters like Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe I was forced to read in high school. The difference was in school I still muttered about reading dead masters and times, but grew to love the descriptions, plots and characters that transported me to another moment in history. In “The Rapist” I read greedily to see where the book was going, totally engrossed in the story. The honesty and freshness of the words from the main character kept me glued to the page to see what happened to the man caught in the worst circumstances and an act of degradation to woman. That is about all I want to say about the plot. I understand Les’s reasons for not explaining the details. You need fresh eyes to appreciate it but that isn’t to say I won’t go back and reread it like other writing masters savoring it. It is one of those books that each time you read it, you find another kernel of truth, a pearl of wisdom. It has that many facets wrapped in rich layers of dialogue, characterization and setting that pounded with each of the rapist’s heartbeat. I was hooked from the first page.

Wendy Gager, author of A Case of Infatuation, A Case of Accidental Intersection, and A Case of Hometown Blues.

11. Les Edgerton’s masterly The Rapist is a deeply disturbing journey into the murky recesses of the mind of psychopathic death row inmate Truman Ferris Pinter. An intellectual, erudite, philosophical misanthrope, Truman draws the reader inexorably into his fractured web. There are times when one nods one’s head in agreement with his well-reasoned arguments, only to shrink back in horror at the realisation. Sympathy for The Devil, indeed, in this dark vision of a black heart that is both astoundingly honest and ultimately terrifying.

Lesley Ann Sharrock former publisher/editor Moondance Media, author of 7th Magpie.

 

THREE NEW NOVELS YOU GOTTA READ!

Hi folks,

I’m posting reviews I just wrote on a few of my friends’ work and thought I’d share them here. The first is a noir crime novel by Allan Guthrie titled SLAMMER and it’s a beaut! Allan told me he was worried I’d find something wrong with it since it was set in prison and… well, you know… I spent time in prison. He shouldn’t have worried in the least. It’s pitch-perfect and if I didn’t know better, I’d guess he was in the cell next to me in J-Block. It’s that accurate. It’s set in a Scottish prison but there doesn’t seem to be much of an appreciable difference between the two. Mr. Guthrie is renowned as one of the best crime and noir writers extant and it was both a privilege and an honor to review his brilliant work.

The second book featured here is by my good friend Bob Stewart. Bob and I keep dancing around the possibility of co-writing a book together but I’m kind of afraid I wouldn’t be able to hold up my end to match his considerable writing chops. Bob has written some truly fantastic books. For a long time, he wrote true crime and his NO REMORSE is one of the best true crime nonfiction books I’ve ever read. He’s switching to fiction these days and his fiction chops are every bit as good as his nonfiction ones. He’s been busy these days as this is his second novel released just this year. Check out the synopsis and my review of HIDDEN EVIL following the one for Allan Guthrie.

The third is by gritty Irish crime writer, JJ Toner, which features a truly memorable protagonist, DI Ben Jordan in a wonderful read where you’ll need to buckle up or suffer possible whiplash at the twists and turns it makes. You'll want to read ST. PATRICK'S DAY SPECIAL.

I hope this works—having both an Irish and a Scottish writer here together… Bob may have to referee…

SLAMMER

By

Allan Guthrie

Review by Les Edgerton

This is going to sound odd, but the whole time I was reading Allan Guthrie’s brilliant novel, Slammer, I kept thinking about a writer I’d read back in the eighties, James Kelman. I couldn’t figure out why Kelman kept cropping up at the edge of my brain as I turned the pages, so I went and found a copy of Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late, and reread it, trying to figure out where the connection was.

I thought at first it was the subject matter—both books deal with prison, albeit one centers on a guy in prison and the other (Guthrie’s) has a protagonist who is a guard, or as we call ‘em here in the States, a hack.

But, that wasn’t it. It really bothered me. Then, I thought perhaps it was that both were Scottish. Now, I felt I was getting closer to uncovering the connection my mind was making.

And then, it dawned on me. It was the world-view of both writers—their cadence of their expression. I knew then why I had joined two writers of different eras together. It was the same visceral feeling I got when I first read James Lee Burke and Joe R. Lansdale and Anthony Neil Smith and Harry Crews—the feeling that I was reading the spiritual descendents of William Faulkner.

It was a geographical thing—no—more—it was a geographically political thing. While Mssrs. Burke and Lansdale and Smith and Crews all employ particular voices and all are different from Faulkner’s (as well as similar), there is an undercurrent in all that make them related. I was seeing the same thing in Guthrie and Kelman. It’s a cultural thing I suspect. I wish I could articulate it better than I am here and I may well be far off-base, but I feel what I feel.

Stories are more than a plot and characters doing interesting things. The very best of our literature goes beyond that and allows the reader to see inside an intelligent mind. That’s what happens with Guthrie’s books. We see that dark place within that only the very best of writers ever get to and it’s the definition of honesty many seek but most grow weak when approaching and end up settling for an approximation of truth. Guthrie gets it.

What all the writers I’ve named here have in common is a dark view of existence. One that I share in my own outlook on life. Which is why I’m so attracted to this sort of writer more than any other.

As an ex-con, I’m leery of novels set in prisons. The vast majority get it wrong. It becomes clear immediately that their knowledge of prisons comes from TV and bad movies. When I encounter terms like “shiv” and the like, I quickly put the book in the “send to the used-book sale” pile. Slammer is the real deal. When I was reading it, my hands began to sweat and I had to put it down often and take a walk outside and smoke a cigarette or two. I’ve been out of prison for decades now and for the first twenty years experienced nightmares. They’ve been absent for many years now, but they came back while reading this book.

And that’s all right. I’ll forgive Mr. Guthrie for this. I may have gotten back the nightmares for a time, but I also received something very important. Genuine and raw feeling. And that’s worth a lot.

He gets it exactly right. When I was in the joint, our biggest source for drugs was always the hacks. Either directly or by their complicity. For an apt example, there were two brothers—one inside the walls and one outside—and on visiting days the free brother would visit. They had to plan their visits for when a certain guard was on duty. On those visits, the brothers wore identical shoes, and at some point during the visit, they’d simply switch shoes. Each had hollowed-out heels. In the inmate’s would be the “green” (real money) he’d collected for the previous week’s drugs, while his brother’s kicks held smack. If a righteous hack had been on duty, they wouldn’t have been able to make the switch. The thing is, without guards, a lot less drugs would find their way to prison populations and that’s exactly what Guthrie’s guards are doing.

Right on point.

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Toqueville said something to the effect that nations are judged by the quality of their prisons. From Kelman to Guthrie, I think I have a pretty good idea of Scotland.

Get this book!

http://www.amazon.com/Slammer-Allan-Guthrie/dp/0151012954/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318430794&sr=1-1

And here’s the skinny on Bob Stewart’s new book:

HIDDEN EVIL

Synopsis:

After a drug-addled teenager turns the annual Battle of Flowers Parade into a bloodbath, Majorette Cindi Neff - photographed blood covered and screaming beside the body of a dead classmate - becomes the media symbol of the tragedy, and the object of cult leader Juan Otero's obsession.

Soon after his burial, the gravesite of Cindi's dead classmate is violated and Deputy Sheriff Nancy Neff, an expert in Afro-Caribbean religions, is called to the scene. Minister Luke Oeding, a representative for the bereaved family, joins Nancy in the investigation into this unimaginable crime.

In a deadly chess match of good versus evil, they plunge into the world of the South Texas drug cult and come face to face with Palo Mayombe, the darkest of the hidden religions. When Cindi Neff is kidnapped, Nancy and Luke race to save her from the clutches of the malevolent cult before she is sacrificed in an Easter Sunday Palo Mayombe ritual.

Les Edgerton says:

"Bob Stewart's new novel, HIDDEN EVIL, is ripped directly from today's headlines about drug smuggling on the Texas border. This puts a face to the horrors that we seem to see daily on the evening news. Deeply-disturbed characters, facing what they see as a black future, turn to drugs and the occult and what follows…human sacrifice. It's a tale that begins with a Columbine-style massacre and ends on Easter Sunday in a classic battle between good and evil. I don't read vampire or werewolf novels simply because I don't believe they exist and it's a bit difficult to conjure up any kind of delicious fear by pretend monsters, but these folks are real and quite possibly living on my block… so, yeah… it pushed my fear button. After I read it, I slept with the nightlight on for a week. Get this book. It's truly scary and it's damned fine writing and story-telling."

http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Evil-ebook/dp/B005TUFB3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318270780&sr=1-1

And finally, here’s my review on JJ Toner’s new book, ST. PATRICK’S DAY SPECIAL

St. Patrick’s Day Special

by JJ Toner

Review by Les Edgerton

Secure your seat belt before embarking on this ride! Just a warning to expect twists and turns aplenty on JJ Toner’s wild crime ride. I’d say that this was a page-turner and if I was just reading to be entertained that would be true. But, I’m also a writer and I had to keep stopping to make notes on his techniques that I plan to steal for my own writing! I’ll leave it to others to deliver the plot points—I’ll just say that the tension never leaves the page and Ben Jordan doesn’t spiral down into the abyss—he plunges into it head-first. And, lest you think all is grim on the Toner landscape, the black humor he employs at just the right moment lightens the read with delicious and perfect pitch. Get this book and then keep your eyes open for his next one!

http://www.amazon.com/Patricks-Day-Special-Jordan-ebook/dp/B005JPEGKG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318270932&sr=1-1 

Enjoy!

Blue skies,

Les

P.S. Sorry for not being able to provide the Amazon widget thingy but for some reason I can't get it to work and can't locate a ten-year-old to show me how to fix it, but if you just click on the links, it'll take you to each book on Amazon.

TWO-WAY SPLIT by ALLAN GUTHRIE

Hi folks,

I want to talk about a book and a writer I recently discovered who's the "real deal," Allan Guthrie.

Recently, Brian Lindenmuth, my editor at Snubnose Press, made a comment about one of my novels, The Bitch, which was a wonderful compliment to it. He said, “I thoroughly enjoyed it and I appreciated that it was a dark novel that ended darkly. So many novels are dark in the telling but pull back at the end, leaving me to shake my head.”

Normally, I wouldn’t insert myself or my own work into the review of another’s work—that smacks of crude and blatant self-promotion--but Brian’s quote so perfectly fit my assessment of Allan Guthrie’s novel, Two-Way Split, I wanted to give him credit and then trust that the reader of this review and Mr. Guthrie himself, wouldn’t take offense at doing so.

Like Brian, I am so often disappointed when reaching the end of a noir or crime fiction when the work takes a major turn and ends with a “Hollywood happy-sappy” finale. You know, where the mass intellect is satisfied that the person they’re rooting for throughout the book didn’t end up in jail or get killed or maimed or something terrible. I always recall what screenwriter Callie Khouri went through with her brilliant screenplay of Thelma & Louise, when the “suits” at the studio wanted to let the two women live at the end—perhaps go off to prison for a few years and then emerge as happy campers. Thank god, Khouri resisted all of that silly nonsense and had Thelma and Louise plunge to their deaths off the Grand Canyon!

And, here we get another writer who doesn’t bow down to the knucklehead mouth-breathers who prefer such sappy endings! You know those folks. They’re the ones who keep that political correctness bullshit going and whose spiritual forebears were responsible in earlier ages for changing the Cinderella story where the evil stepsisters originally cut off their toes to fit the slipper into the insipid and soulless version kiddies are subjected to today. Those folks who don’t like to see much truth in their fiction… Or in their own lives…

Two-Way Split starts out dark, gets even darker, and ends in almost total blackness. Superb! A novel for intelligent readers. Halleluiah! Sharon Sheehe Stark, a brilliant writer who led one of my workshops during one of my MFA residencies at Vermont College put forth to us her very original and against-the-common-herd-mentality of fiction teachers, when she dismissed the prevailing writing theory of creating characters, who promoted the technique of “having your bad guy like kittens,” as a sort of trick to get the reader to like him or her.

Sharon gave contrarian advice. “Paint your character as dark as you possibly can. Don’t make him ‘love kittens’ or any of that crapola. Create a real person who hates cats as much as he hates everything else. Do not fall temptation to giving him any of those ‘saving graces.’ If you do that (and here is her genius), then the light will shine through the cracks.” (Italics mine.)

This is precisely what Guthrie does in his novel. He gives us characters who act honestly, according to their view of life, as flawed as that view may be to those who prefer their characters to end up in AA or forgiving those who trespassed against them. Ain’t happenin’ in Two-Way Split.

And, best of all, this is a novel that is enormously entertaining. The words such as “riveting” and the phrases such as “couldn’t put it down,” or “this was a page-turner,” are overused in assessments like this—many times, undeservedly--but dang it, all of those and more apply to this novel. I couldn’t put it down; it was riveting; it was decidedly a page-turner… and I’ve become a huge, huge fan of Guthrie. This is going to cost me some bucks, as now that I’ve read Two-Way Split, I have to buy the rest of his novels… and he has a few!

I’ll leave it to others to deliver plot points and all that. I just want to get out the message that this is a powerful book and one you’ll thank me for recommending to you. One thing I will mention is the title. It’s one of the great titles in literature. It works on several levels which I won’t reveal. You’ll just have to read it to find that out.

One note about the ending. As you can guess, this isn’t one of those “happy-sappy Hollywood endings.” It is, quite so, one of the best endings I’ve ever read. A good ending represents both a win and a loss. In Thelma & Louise, for example, the “loss” is fairly clear. They die. The win takes a bit more thought, but it’s also clear. The two women achieve their independence from men. Two-Way Split also has a profound win and a profound loss. You’ll have to read it to see. I promise you it’ll be worth it.

I teach creative writing. You can bet I’ll be using this novel in my classes. I’m already using it to inform my own writing.

Blue skies,

Les

P.S. Allan Guthrie is a writer, editor and literary agent who lives and creates fantastic fiction  in Scotland. I think he wears a kilt and plays bagpipes, but that isn’t confirmed and may just be a stereotype spread by vicious rumors… You can check out Allan Guthrie on his blog and website at http://criminal-e.blogspot.com/ and http://www.allanguthrie.co.uk/