The Bitch

“The Bitch is the kind of raw crime fiction that’s right up my alley, like sandpaper for the brain. Edgerton has got the chops. Mad chops. Gonna make us all ashamed of our puny efforts one day.”

—Anthony Neil Smith, bestselling author of Choke on Your Lies, Psychomatic, Hogdoggin’, Yellow Medicine, The Drummer, To the Devil, My Regards, and others.

“The Bitch is a vicious barnstormer of a novel, a noir rollercoaster that won’t let you unbuckle until that final three-word smackdown. Les Edgerton is Eddie Bunker’s pulpy cousin and Eugene Izzi’s soul brother, and with a spiritual family like that, you can’t go wrong. Pick it up immediately.”

—Ray Banks, internationally bestselling author of Dead Money, Beast of Burden, The Big Blind. Saturday’s Child, Donkey Punch, No More Heroes and others.

“Every crime novelist remembers how his breath was literally taken away when he first started to read the early novels of Elmore Leonard. Les Edgerton has used the time he served in prison well. Years from now many future crime writers will also remember discovering him. His first crime novel, but not his first published book, The Bitch is a realistic crime noir kind of novel that reminds me of Unknown Man 89, La Brava, Stick, and The Killer Inside Me.”

—Joseph Trigoboff, author of The Bone Orchard and The Shooting Gallery.

“The Bitch is superb. Edgerton’s hard, pitch-perfect prose and relentless plot provide a one-two knockout punch of crime novel perfection...the real bitch of The Bitch is that I tried to buy this priceless work and publish it under a new imprint and I couldn’t afford the damn thing. Now it’s gold in someone else’s pocket.”

—Cortright McMeel, author of Short, founding editor and publisher of Murdaland Magazine: Crime Fiction for the 21st Century and Noir Nation: International Journal of Crime Fiction.

“Imagine, if you will, Les Edgerton, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler sipping straight whiskey while swapping lies in the back booth of the Linebacker bar as the “noir” legends welcome Edgerton into the brotherhood of broken dreams. With The Bitch, Edgerton earns his way into this special literary brotherhood. No, The Bitch isn’t a wild woman, but prison slang for “ha-BITCH-ual criminal.” This is a taut tale of double-cross, death, diamonds and destruction as Jake Bishop fights to protect all he holds dear—his freedom, his pregnant wife, and his teen-age brother—by holding The Bitch at bay when trapped into one last job. Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe could learn a thing or two from this hairdresser.”

—Bob Stewart, author of Remorse, a True Crime Book of the Month selection, Hidden Evil, and others.

“I liked The Bitch so much that I wanted to publish it. But we lost out and New Pulp Press got a hell of a book. The Bitch is a dark crime fiction story that never once pulls a punch or ducks behind some bullshit like ‘happy endings’ or ‘closure.’ The Bitch isn’t afraid to stay dark until the very end.”

—Brian Lindenmuth, editor/publisher of Snubnose Press and Spinetingler Magazine.

“Les Edgerton. I just read his newest hard-boiled effort, The Bitch, and I realized I didn’t once breathe through the entire thing. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it is one of the most fun, dangerous, if not pyromanic literary performances of the past year (word up is that parts of it are taken from Les’s own life. Holy crap, this guy shouldn’t be alive!). Like Les’s previous bestselling nonfiction effort on writing, Hooked, this novel is a sure bet.”

—Vincent Zandri author of The Remains, The Innocent, Moonlight Falls and The Concrete Pearl.

“Les Edgerton’s brilliantly hardboiled The Bitch is the tense and hard hitting story of Jake Bishop, a reformed ex-con whose dark past drags him back into a life of crime like an umbilical cord tied tight around his neck.”

—Paul D. Brazill, author of 13 Shots of Noir.

“The satisfying stink of criminal authenticity wafts up from the pages of The Bitch. It reads like the diary of an ex-con who can write—somebody with literary skills but no damn sense for staying out of trouble. Maybe that was Les Edgerton as a young man before life beat some sense into him. If you’re wondering why Goodreads Listopia for classic noir fiction included The Bitch in its top fifty books of all time, alongside Mickey Spillane and David Goodis, the answer is simple: It deserves to be there.”

—Anonymous-9, author of Hard Bite

“New Pulp Press masterfully executes the (otherwise) unprintable insult of today: Literature. Genius masked as genre, for all of us.”
—New York Magazine

New Pulp Press was founded in 2008 as an alternative to the often generic world of conglomerate corporate publishing. Dedicated to giving voice to some of today’s most talented and neglected writers, New Pulp Press focuses on off-center crime fiction and neo-pulp. Veering away from the assumption that a protagonist must be a sympathetic character, our books are centered around con-men, losers, and sociopaths. In other words, we represent what's best about America.

Here you won't find any saccharine coming-of-age novels or self-help books. You will find raw and desperate tales about men and women on the wrong side of the law, tales drenched with nihilism and loathing.

Read our books. Pass them on to friends. Give us feedback. We're not a big press, but we're plenty scrappy.