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Imprint: No Exit Press
Category: Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity’ – Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2
An angry and mercilessly suspenseful novel about an ex-con’s attempt to negotiate the “straight world” and his swan dive back into the paradoxical security of crime. It is airtight in its construction, almost photorealistic in its portrayal of L.A. lowlife and utterly knowledgeable about the terrors of liberty, the high of the quick score and the rage that makes the finger tighten on the trigger of the gun.
No Beast So Fierce was Eddie Bunker’s debut novel and has the searing intensity of a novel based precisely on experience, with Bunker having spent most of his early life in maximum security penitentiaries for a variety of offences including armed robbery. It has been suggested that Tarantino draws on No Beast So Fierce for the botched robbery in Reservoir Dogs, a film in which Bunker plays the character of Mr Blue.
RRP: £6.99
ISBN: 9781874061090
Published: January 1, 1993
Extent: 320 pages
RRP: £4.99
ISBN: 9781842437490
Published: July 26, 2012
‘A gripping and harrowing read’
Daily Mail
The most compelling quality of No Beast So Fierce is that, solidly rooted in his own experiences, it explores the nature of the criminal mind with almost blinding authenticity. Bunker is obviously a man of unusual gifts honed under circumstances that would destroy most men
Los Angeles Times
‘Quite simply, one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years’
James Ellroy, New York Times bestselling author
‘The best first person crime novel I have ever read’
Quentin Tarantino
Edward Bunker, Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs, was the author of No Beast So Fierce, Little Boy Blue, Dog Eat Dog, The Animal Factory and his autobiography, Mr Blue, all published by No Exit. He was co-screenwriter of the Oscar nominated movie, The Runaway Train, and appeared in over 30 feature films, including Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman, the film of his book No Beast So Fierce. Edward Bunker died in 2005 and another novel, Stark, was discovered in his papers.
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