Swap: A Mystery
By (Author) John McFetridge
ECW Press,Canada
ECW Press,Canada
1st September 2009
Canada
General
Fiction
813.6
Hardback
240
Detectives Price and McKeon are called to the scene a husband and wife found slumped in their car, parked sideways on a busy downtown on-ramp, a bullet in each of their heads. That's what's in the papers, and that's all the public sees. Toronto the Good, with occasional specks of random badness. But behind that disposable headline, Toronto's shadow city sprawls outwards, a grasping and vicious economy of drugs, guns, sex, and gold bullion. This is Toronto's shadow city, and you won't recognize it.
"In Swap, John McFetridge gives readers an in-depth look into the world of organized crime in the form of outlaw biker gangs, and the difficulties law enforcement faces trying to quash them...The tension is palpable and the reader waits for the one spark that will ignite a bloody turf war...Swap's dialogue displays much of [Elmore] Leonard's sparkle, and the novel's terse, staccato prose evokes [Ken] Bruen. But Swap is more than just the sum of its influences. It grabs you by the throat and squeezes until you agree to read just on page, just one more page." -- Quill & Quire
John McFetridge is the coauthor of Below of the Line and author of Dirty Sweet and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. He lives in Toronto.