FLUXEUROPA: EDWARD BUNKER

FluxEuropa - dark music and more

FluxEuropa has suspended active publication and no longer requires items for review. The site is, however, being maintained as an archive and you can still post to the Gigboard and order Amazon products which helps to subsidise its continuation.

EDWARD BUNKER - THE REAL MR BLUE

EDWARD BUNKER will be best known to most people for his cameo part as Mr Blue in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but he was a real gangster and is now a successful author. His novel, No Beast So Fierce, is arguably one of the best descriptions of the American underworld.

The fact that a writer of the standing of James Ellroy (whose own LA Quartet is a noir classic) called this book "simply, one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years, perhaps the best novel of the Los Angeles underworld ever written" is a testament to its calibre.

The story begins as the main character, and Bunker's alter ego, Max Dembo, is about to be released after an eight year prison sentence. He is convinced he is going to go straight. The story centres around his increasingly inevitable return to the job he does best.

Although the book is classified as fiction, it is very much based on Bunker's own career in and out of prison. His description of America's penal system is horrifying. His view of the racial problems in prison will shock some. Dembo has been made a racist by his time spent inside. It's almost become for him a basic mechanism of survival.

That said Dembo, and by implication Bunker, should not be dismissed as just another white trash bigot, for Dembo's closest friend inside is black. Aaron Billings has used the time behind bars to study, and has mastered several languages and electronics. His obvious intelligence and pride even earns him the respect of the prison's white supremacists. Indeed, the book hints that he gets more trouble from his fellow black inmates.

Although they are close friends, race hovers cloud-like over the relationship. Indeed the America they both return to is in many ways as divided as the prison they have left behind. When Dembo delivers a message to his friend's mother in a black ghetto, he has to risk attack. On the other hand Billings has to turn down an invitation from Dembo to weekend in white Las Vegas as he would stand out and be an obvious target for the police.

The book describes well the flotsam washed up on LA's concrete shores. It is a good antidote for anyone who holds any romantic illusions about criminal culture. But Bunker also honestly describes the enjoyable aspects of being a career criminal: no nine-to-five tread-mill, and the feeling of power (admittedly short and often sordid) felt over the everyday world the criminal lives and feeds amongst and on.

Bunker has an excellent natural style and the book is very hard to put down. The tension builds effortlessly and without obvious contrivance. Ironically, he is now a professional writer with four books and an Oscar-nominated screen-play to his credit. It just goes to prove that it is possible, with enough will and talent, to overcome and rise above even the most appalling of backgrounds....... and sometimes even to do it legally!

TONY WAKEFORD
6 July 1996