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Table of Contents
Author Q&A
About The Book
“Deviously intelligent...Irresistible.” —The New York Times Book Review • “Murder Bimbo is Gone Girl for the Luigi Mangione era.” —Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X
The exhilaratingly twisty story of a sex worker turned political assassin on the run, Murder Bimbo is an unputdownable and wholly fresh take on truth, murder, and optics in our national moment.
A thirty-two-year-old sex worker is shocked when she’s approached by undercover government agents to aid them in a top-secret plot to assassinate a politician known as Meat Neck. But once the deed is done, she realizes what made her the perfect recruit: She’s 100% disposable.
Holed up in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, she now has only two days, her wits, and a laptop to save her own life.
Her best bet is to reach out to the wildly popular feminist investigative podcast Justice for Bimbos. In a hastily typed series of emails, the newly minted “Murder Bimbo” explains how she was recruited and then trained by a cabal of code-named US agents to take out Meat Neck.
Then she opens a new email. This time, it’s addressed to her ex, and the facts line up a little differently…
Constructed in three increasingly unhinged acts, each a more subversive version of the story than the last, Murder Bimbo can be read as a gloriously bold literary thriller, a satirical vigilante's manifesto, or a raucous send-up of the political insanity we all live inside every day. Either way, it’s a dead-serious announcement of an electric new voice in American literature.
The exhilaratingly twisty story of a sex worker turned political assassin on the run, Murder Bimbo is an unputdownable and wholly fresh take on truth, murder, and optics in our national moment.
A thirty-two-year-old sex worker is shocked when she’s approached by undercover government agents to aid them in a top-secret plot to assassinate a politician known as Meat Neck. But once the deed is done, she realizes what made her the perfect recruit: She’s 100% disposable.
Holed up in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, she now has only two days, her wits, and a laptop to save her own life.
Her best bet is to reach out to the wildly popular feminist investigative podcast Justice for Bimbos. In a hastily typed series of emails, the newly minted “Murder Bimbo” explains how she was recruited and then trained by a cabal of code-named US agents to take out Meat Neck.
Then she opens a new email. This time, it’s addressed to her ex, and the facts line up a little differently…
Constructed in three increasingly unhinged acts, each a more subversive version of the story than the last, Murder Bimbo can be read as a gloriously bold literary thriller, a satirical vigilante's manifesto, or a raucous send-up of the political insanity we all live inside every day. Either way, it’s a dead-serious announcement of an electric new voice in American literature.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
From: Murder Bimbo
To: Justice Bimbo
October 18 at 6:25AM
Dear Justice Bimbo,
I saw you yesterday. We were on the same block in SoHo. I was walking uptown. You were passing a poster of your own enlarged face in the window of a public radio building. I probably wouldn’t have recognized you if I hadn’t seen your face two ways: big and flat, then small and in real life. There was something funny about the combination. I looked away then back, away then back.
“Justice for Bimbos” the poster said in big pink script across your headshot. The name of your podcast.
I had to be in Midtown in an hour and had decided to walk to burn off nervous energy, and because I don’t know the subways and was a little afraid of getting lost or having to dive off the train at my stop in an embarrassing way. I didn’t stop walking, but I slowed down enough to see you drop your phone in your back pocket and open the door. Then I googled you.
I was glad to have something to do while I walked. I found your podcast. I skimmed the episode titles and realized I knew your work. Or, not knew, but it seemed familiar. I had seen articles about you. Friends, people I trust, had selected episodes to convince me of your brilliance: JonBenét Ramsey, Monica Lewinsky, Aileen Wuornos. The truth is, I had never managed to click play. It’s not personal. I’m just not into podcasts.
I read the short bio on your site, I found the headshot from your poster. I read a list of all your work then I read the list of your awards. I read the controversy section of your Wikipedia page which described the series you did on ultra-right-wing political candidate Meat Neck’s mistress, and how the media hated her for the wrong reasons. I downloaded the first episode of the series for later.
Sorry. This probably isn’t very alluring, is it: a fan letter from someone who doesn’t know your work. I wish I had time to listen or at least to do a better job at lying, but I don’t. And maybe that would seem creepy anyway. I can’t risk creeping you out. I should get to the point.
I’m in trouble. In the fifteen hours since I passed you on the street, I’ve become one of your endangered women. Like with all of them, it would be hard to step back and look at me without thinking that I brought the danger on myself. I am not entirely innocent. At least I should have known better. That’s the world we live in, right? You can either make every effort to be and appear innocent, if you’re a woman, and usually still get fucked and blamed for it. Or you can live your life, hope the happiness outweighs the danger, and sort the rest out when you have to.
I guess now I have to.
I’m not in the city anymore. I’m in a shabby little cabin that used to be part of a kids’ camp and is now used in the summer for very bare-bones corporate retreats. But it’s the offseason. The water is off. The electricity is off. There are six cots pushed against the wall and I’m at the one the farthest from the door, hoping the sun will come up soon, so that the light of my computer screen doesn’t act like a spotlight on my face for anyone who could be looking in the window.
Someone is coming for me.
Do you believe in fate? I definitely don’t—except for when it happens to me, and then I believe in it silently, so as not to scare it away.
I saw you, I saw your photo, I looked you up. I kept walking. I thought we were just two women on our way to work. I thought your work probably included a microphone and being smart. I thought the only difference between us is that you are famous and I am not.
Then I remembered that I was about to be famous, too, in a way. Do famous people just write to each other like this?
I’m stalling. I’m nervous. There’s a lot riding on this and there’s no way to explain except by explaining. It’s actually because of the fame that I need your help. Here goes nothing.
By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the assassination of Meat Neck?
I killed him.
Sincerely,
Murder Bimbo
From: Murder Bimbo
To: Justice Bimbo
October 18 at 6:25AM
Dear Justice Bimbo,
I saw you yesterday. We were on the same block in SoHo. I was walking uptown. You were passing a poster of your own enlarged face in the window of a public radio building. I probably wouldn’t have recognized you if I hadn’t seen your face two ways: big and flat, then small and in real life. There was something funny about the combination. I looked away then back, away then back.
“Justice for Bimbos” the poster said in big pink script across your headshot. The name of your podcast.
I had to be in Midtown in an hour and had decided to walk to burn off nervous energy, and because I don’t know the subways and was a little afraid of getting lost or having to dive off the train at my stop in an embarrassing way. I didn’t stop walking, but I slowed down enough to see you drop your phone in your back pocket and open the door. Then I googled you.
I was glad to have something to do while I walked. I found your podcast. I skimmed the episode titles and realized I knew your work. Or, not knew, but it seemed familiar. I had seen articles about you. Friends, people I trust, had selected episodes to convince me of your brilliance: JonBenét Ramsey, Monica Lewinsky, Aileen Wuornos. The truth is, I had never managed to click play. It’s not personal. I’m just not into podcasts.
I read the short bio on your site, I found the headshot from your poster. I read a list of all your work then I read the list of your awards. I read the controversy section of your Wikipedia page which described the series you did on ultra-right-wing political candidate Meat Neck’s mistress, and how the media hated her for the wrong reasons. I downloaded the first episode of the series for later.
Sorry. This probably isn’t very alluring, is it: a fan letter from someone who doesn’t know your work. I wish I had time to listen or at least to do a better job at lying, but I don’t. And maybe that would seem creepy anyway. I can’t risk creeping you out. I should get to the point.
I’m in trouble. In the fifteen hours since I passed you on the street, I’ve become one of your endangered women. Like with all of them, it would be hard to step back and look at me without thinking that I brought the danger on myself. I am not entirely innocent. At least I should have known better. That’s the world we live in, right? You can either make every effort to be and appear innocent, if you’re a woman, and usually still get fucked and blamed for it. Or you can live your life, hope the happiness outweighs the danger, and sort the rest out when you have to.
I guess now I have to.
I’m not in the city anymore. I’m in a shabby little cabin that used to be part of a kids’ camp and is now used in the summer for very bare-bones corporate retreats. But it’s the offseason. The water is off. The electricity is off. There are six cots pushed against the wall and I’m at the one the farthest from the door, hoping the sun will come up soon, so that the light of my computer screen doesn’t act like a spotlight on my face for anyone who could be looking in the window.
Someone is coming for me.
Do you believe in fate? I definitely don’t—except for when it happens to me, and then I believe in it silently, so as not to scare it away.
I saw you, I saw your photo, I looked you up. I kept walking. I thought we were just two women on our way to work. I thought your work probably included a microphone and being smart. I thought the only difference between us is that you are famous and I am not.
Then I remembered that I was about to be famous, too, in a way. Do famous people just write to each other like this?
I’m stalling. I’m nervous. There’s a lot riding on this and there’s no way to explain except by explaining. It’s actually because of the fame that I need your help. Here goes nothing.
By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the assassination of Meat Neck?
I killed him.
Sincerely,
Murder Bimbo
About The Author
Photograph by Adam Deen
Rebecca Novack grew up in the Rocky Mountains. She has a master’s in theological studies from Harvard Divinity school.
Product Details
- Publisher: Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster (February 10, 2026)
- Length: 224 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668214619
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Raves and Reviews
“Even if you’re not primed to root for assassins, Murder Bimbo's deadpan observations and emotional intelligence may wear you down…The novel’s three-act structure is a daring narrative choice, and pays off . . . It’s a genuine pleasure to sift through her contradictions (a Marxist who loves money!) and pan for the truth . . . Trust me when I say Novack has a great ear for the inanities of contemporary language, just like all great satirists do. . . as she shows time and again, blurring the facts can lead you to a deeper truth.”—Joumana Khatib, New York Times Book Review
“Murder Bimbo is an ingeniously structured prism: at first look it plays satirically on true crime sensationalism, at second, it flays the political moment of grift, greed, and exploitation, and finally, it contemplates the desperate and lasting things we do for love. At all levels, it is a blast.” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
“Rebecca Novack’s Murder Bimbo is an engrossing, hilarious revenge novel that perfectly captures our paranoid political moment. Is it a spy thriller? Is it a love story? It’s both and so much more—sharp, surprising, bold, and impossible to put down. Novack’s debut doesn’t miss." —Isle McElroy, author of People Collide
“Murder Bimbo is Gone Girl for the Luigi Mangione era, and Rebecca Novack is one of our funniest and most acerbic new writers." —Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X
"A riotously sharp, darkly glittering debut that detonates every expectation of the contemporary thriller. Rebecca Novack dazzles as she turns satire, desire, and rage into something electric and new—this is the rare book that feels like it’s brilliantly inventing its own genre as it goes." —Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman
“Murder Bimbo takes each one of its brazen hairpin turns with giddy gusto. Its cunning, charismatic narrator leads us confidently past ‘unreliable’ into something much wilder and more fun. Rebecca Novack’s debut is keenly observant, frenetically funny, and a hell of a good time.” —Temim Fruchter, author of City of Laughter
"What elevates the novel is its biting satire. The narrator is slippery, funny, image-obsessed and fully aware that storytelling is power. Truth becomes transactional. Morality becomes aesthetic. Murder Bimbo isn’t about uncovering answers; it’s about interrogating the need for them." —The Seattle Times
"The protagonist’s voice is sharp, subversive and unrepentant, holding a mirror to misogyny, media spectacle and political hypocrisy. This book earns its place on a list about female fury because its narrator literally detonates the expectations placed on women, weaponizing stereotypes to survive and control her own story. It’s fierce, funny and incredibly original — a modern riff on crime fiction with feminist bite." —BookTrib.
“She’s a sex worker and a political assassin—or is she? This highly comedic novel about one woman’s quest to clear her name after being involved in a high profile murder is a wild satire for the world we live in.” —Forbes
“This book is doing something totally fascinating and unexpected… It’s a romp. [Murder Bimbo] is having fun and we’re having fun with her. . . An accomplishment.”—New York Times Book Review Podcast, Books We’re Looking Forward to this Winter
"A thrilling premise in its own right, made all the more memorable by the titular killer’s twisty (and unreliable) narration. From beginning to end, Murder Bimbo will keep you on your toes.” —Bustle
"Murder Bimbo is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s as unhinged as you can imagine and the best thing you could do is read it without reading any reviews or publicity copy. Just dive in and experience the thrill of Novack’s work.” —Debutiful
"A compelling tale and hilarious metamystery in which the titular bimbo may or may not commit murder, may or may not be a spy, and may or may not be a bimbo…It's so good." —CrimeReads
"A great thriller but also a tremendous literary trick. And it’s so funny.” —WAMC
"Sly and incendiary. . . Novack’s novel forges fascinating connections . . . . Readers will be seduced." —Publishers Weekly
"Propulsive, electric, Murder Bimbo conceals and reveals and conceals again, as any disruptive queer act must. . . . Novack plays with our readerly expectations about motive, audience, authorship, and the genre of true crime." —Electric Literature
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