Dirty Sweet

May 15, 2006
When real-estate agent Roxanne Keyes witnesses a shooting at a streetlight, she realizes she knows the killer. Like a heroine in an Elmore Leonard novel, she decides the appropriate course of action, rather than turning the killer over to the police, is to blackmail him. Naturally, her scheme does not go according to plan. McFetridge combines a tough and gritty story populated by engagingly seedy characters (Boris Suliemanov, the Russian mobster; Vince Fournier, the Internet-porn czar; and a couple of shady police detectives) with an effective use of a setting, Toronto, not that familiar to many American readers of hard-boiled fiction. Brad Smith's " One-Eyed Jacks," set in 1950s Toronto, and John Farrow's Emile Cinq-Mars series, are other examples of how Canadian cities can bring freshness to the familiar hard-boiled world. Readers will also notice a connection between McFetridge and such gritty British writers as Ken Bruen and Ian Rankin.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)