Imagine the hurricane emotions of a man who has served eight years in prison, has been free less than a week, and who finds himself again imprisoned without having committed a crime. A swirl of loneliness, rage, and despair washed me into a tearful, blinded madness. I pleaded silently, “Oh, please help me.” The plea was to Fortune, Fate, God, or a nameless power, a plea that is torn from every man sometime during a lifetime.
No Beast So Fierce is a first-person ride inside the mind of a Los Angeles street criminal—the brutal unfairness of the justice system; the complicated loyalties of a thief; the adrenaline, violence, and compromise. The story revolves around the central contradiction of a life of crime, a tension between a kind of autonomy most people never know and the constant need to risk that autonomy to get by.
Edward Bunker’s main character, Max Dembo, is a man stabbing society’s underbelly with one hand, and trying to ride the thrashing beast to his destiny. A rebellious teenager could easily read it and glamorize the life of a criminal, but Bunker draws the dark realities of crime and prison sharply.
The law and the underworld are in a perpetual conflict, and each attempt to gain advantage or dominance inevitably provokes a reaction. The guardian-types running the criminal justice system seem to operate in a rational manner, as if stricter punishment will deter crime. But Bunker brings the reader into the more visceral mindset of a criminal, where “threats instill fury, not fear.”
This cycle of escalation and adaptation creates a brutally unjust system, where almost every step a perpetrator can make commits him further to the life. Criminals have to prove their mettle to each other, and a strict code of omertà is always in effect. A lifetime criminal has a hard-earned skillset, mindset, and personal network—which act like a series of spike strips preventing an easy turnaround in life.
Any employer has to be made aware of parole status, closing off most jobs to recently returning citizens. Adjusting from a life of edgy freedom to an institutional game of survival is hard enough, but swallowing the renegade’s pride to work menial jobs in the absence of one’s previous close-knit community is a much harder turn to make for many. And of course there are the corrections officers, cops, and petty bureaucrats who become the personal face of a draconian corporate system.
According to his IMDB profile, Bunker started research for the novel at the age of three, when he smashed a neighbor’s property with a hammer, launching an audacious criminal career, which included such lowlights as being the youngest inmate at San Quentin, and landing on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. He eventually reformed himself, and in addition to writing No Beast, worked on various films in Hollywood, including a role as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs.
No Beast So Fierce reads like a TV thriller and pulls no punches on the bitter realities of criminal life. Bunker’s writing is no-nonsense but lively. He drops interesting breadcrumbs about a seasoned thief’s tactical mindset and hyper-vigilance, and every so often lets slip a literary gem, letting his talent gleam quietly from the page. It’s an entertaining read, but also an important look behind one of society’s curtains. I stole the book from the library.1
Just kidding. Allegedly…