His entry begins:
Naben Ruthnum’s A Hero of our Time is both brutally, achingly funny, and precision-tuned to nuances of identity and commerce. Authors, academics—all of us—perform a fair amount of self-mythologizing. In some ways it’s inevitable. What Hero does so well is express the cost of these narratives, question their inevitability, and challenge the hypocrisy of cloaking your ambition in an “origin story” designed to get what you want. What happens when someone challenges your well-crafted story—or in the case of the main character, hoovers it up into their own? The highest praise I can pay A Hero of Our Time is that if it were written worse, the ideas simplified, the edges rounded off—if it were more dishonest but just as well-written—it would win every...[read on]About Hell and Gone, from the publisher:
A captivating new thriller in the Wakeland detective series that explores the depths of Vancouver’s criminal underworld.Visit Sam Wiebe's website.
In one moment of public violence, everything changes for Dave Wakeland. When masked men and women storm an office building in Chinatown,leaving a trail of carnage, the Vancouver PI and his partner, Jeff Chen, find themselves caught up in a mystery that won't let them go.
The police have a vested interest in finding the shooters, and so does the leader of the Exiles motorcycle gang. Both want Wakeland’s help. The deeper he investigates, the more connections he uncovers: a reclusive millionaire with ties to organized crime, an international security company with a sinister reputation, and a high-ranking police officer who seems to have a personal connection to the case. When the shooters themselves start turning up dead, Wakeland realizes the only way to guarantee his own safety, and that of the people he loves, is by finding out who hired the shooters and why.
What Wakeland uncovers are secrets no one wants known—a botched undercover operation, an ambitious gangster and a double-crossing killer who used the shooting to cover up another crime. With a setup like this, anything can go wrong, and does. Skill and luck are needed for Wakeland and Chen to emerge with the killers, the money and their own lives.
My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.
The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.
The Page 69 Test: Cut You Down.
Q&A with Sam Wiebe.
The Page 69 Test: Hell and Gone.
Writers Read: Sam Wiebe.
--Marshal Zeringue
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