Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Dirty Sweet"

Dirty Sweet, John McFetridge's most recent novel, has garnered lots of praise from people who know great crime writing.

So I was delighted that John put Dirty Sweet to the "page 69 test" and reported back with the following:

Dirty Sweet is a book about opportunity. How some people see it everywhere and some people never see it.

It’s an ensemble story. On page one a woman, Roxanne Keyes, a commercial real estate agent who’s business is on the skids, witnesses a murder in broad daylight on a downtown Toronto street. She tells the cops everything – except that she recognizes the driver of the getaway car. She thinks maybe she can blackmail him. From there, everyone involved; Roxanne, the cops, the Russian mobster who drove the getaway car, the bikers who are moving into organized crime in Toronto, a shady internet porn producer Roxanne has rented offices to – everyone - is seeing something for themselves. By page 69 all the double-crosses are underway.

Page 69 is the end of a scene. Boris, the driver of the getaway car, is picking up his Uncle Khozha (the shooter he brought in) at a hotel to take him to the airport to get him on a plane back to New York. But Khozha has been spending time with the strippers from the club Boris owns and doesn’t want to go so fast. Now Khozha decides he’s going to have lunch with his old friend, Boris’s mother.

Page 69:

Amelie was pissed off too, looking like jealous girlfriend.

Boris couldn’t see a way out. He said, “We’ll go to the club, Henri will get you a car.”

Pulling out of the parking lot behind the hotel onto Dixon Road, a plane took off right over their heads. Boris watching it go, up into the clear blue sky, the sun shining on its metal belly, a beautiful sight, thinking, fuck, Khozha should be on that God damned plane.

“Stop.”

Boris hit the brake hard. He’d just about hit a Jeep. A black Liberty with the four lights across the top, just like the one the woman was driving last night. A fat bald guy was driving this one and he gave Boris the finger as he pulled a U, heading back towards the hotel. Boris stared after him and saw a huge billboard with a man’s face on it and a slogan, something about meeting all your leasing needs.

And Boris knew where he’d seen the woman in the Jeep. Where he’d talked to her a couple of years ago. Two blocks from the fucking Starbucks where she was sitting on the patio watching Uncle Khozha shoot Anzor in the face yesterday afternoon.

The same woman who was in the parking lot of his club last night.

The real estate lady. He still had her card in his desk.

Many thanks to John for the input.

Among the praise for Dirty Sweet:

“This is a fine first novel. McFetridge ... has a gift for dialogue and setting … a great eye for detail, and Toronto has never looked seedier. McFetridge is an author to watch.”
— Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

“Toronto novelist John McFetridge has studied at the knee of Elmore Leonard and taken away lessons that I wish more Canadian novelists would. Dirty Sweet is an amusingly sordid tale that features amusingly sordid people … you can’t read it for long without a smile coming across your lips. If more people wrote the kind of clean-as-a-whistle, no-fat prose McFetridge does, this reviewer would finish a lot more of their books.”
— David Gilmour, National Post

"a tough and gritty story populated by engagingly seedy characters."
— Booklist

"The writing is lean, the story moves quickly and McFetridge is already one hell of a storyteller, and he’s a Canadian author to watch for."
— Spinetingler Magazine

"If you love sex, violence and a slice of mystery for good measure, DIRTY SWEET is the right book for you – an R-rated thriller. Enjoy this quick money scheming page turner of a story that will make you spin around as John McFetridge shows you the dark side of Toronto – and I don’t mean the Toronto Maple Leafs! ...
DIRTY SWEET is definitely hot, dirty and sweet."
— Paul Anik, iloveamystery.com

Visit McFetridge's official website and blog.

What's a male writer to do when he needs insights into a Brazilian wax? John persuaded his wife to get one and write about it.