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A review by ianayris
The Bitch by Les Edgerton
5.0
As it says in the blurb, 'the bitch' is prison slang for an 'habitual' criminal. A criminal is deemed 'habitual' if he is incarcerated three times. Jake has been inside twice, so 'the bitch' hangs over him like a modern day Damoclean blade.
At the beginning of the book, we find Jake on the straight and narrow, working in a hair salon, married, his wife due to have a baby. All is rosy. Jake is determined to stay straight, for his wife and for his unborn child. He even has plans to open up his own salon.
But a phone call straight out the past turns Jake's whole world upside down, and he is thrust into a nightmare out of which there seems no escape, where every choice he makes leads him further into hell.
Never before have I read a book wherein the main character's spiralling into the darkness is so brilliantly chronicled. Just as we think Jake has conquered one obstacle, another one comes along to hit him like a truck. So close does the trinity of reader, author, and Jake become, at one point, I wasn't only thinking 'how is Jake going to get out of this', I was thinking 'how is Les Edgerton going to write himself out of this'. But a man of Edgerton's ability is a man to trust to the very end. You know he will write the truth, however much it hurts.
THE BITCH is an absolute belter of a read, right up there with the very best books I've read in the last ten years.
Brilliant.
At the beginning of the book, we find Jake on the straight and narrow, working in a hair salon, married, his wife due to have a baby. All is rosy. Jake is determined to stay straight, for his wife and for his unborn child. He even has plans to open up his own salon.
But a phone call straight out the past turns Jake's whole world upside down, and he is thrust into a nightmare out of which there seems no escape, where every choice he makes leads him further into hell.
Never before have I read a book wherein the main character's spiralling into the darkness is so brilliantly chronicled. Just as we think Jake has conquered one obstacle, another one comes along to hit him like a truck. So close does the trinity of reader, author, and Jake become, at one point, I wasn't only thinking 'how is Jake going to get out of this', I was thinking 'how is Les Edgerton going to write himself out of this'. But a man of Edgerton's ability is a man to trust to the very end. You know he will write the truth, however much it hurts.
THE BITCH is an absolute belter of a read, right up there with the very best books I've read in the last ten years.
Brilliant.