It is hard to categorize this bizarre story. There are so many unpredictable, improbable but hilarious events that it reminded me in places of the best of Terry Fallis’s novels. But other parts of the story are pure pathos that will make you cry. The intricacies and limits of family loyalties are delicately explored even in families that include hardened criminals and drug addicts as well as hard-working honest citizens. There are no heroes and most of the characters are gangster criminals or their accomplices, some of whom are nevertheless made likeable. And there are few loose ends, but facts introduced in the first few chapters are often held in suspense until the explanation comes along much later.
If you can conjure up a plan to steal a prize race horse from one Vancouver stable owned by an international criminal gang and transport it, on a stolen fishing boat (plan B after Plan A goes off the rails), to a Washington state ranch owned by another international gang based in Vancouver, perhaps your imagination is almost as vivid as Keevil’s. But you would also need to imagine a challenge to a round robin game of crokinole as a serious means of settling scores in the criminal underworld. Such improbable twists are somehow made to seem very logical.
The writing style is straightforward chronologically with a first person singular narrator describing, in 44 short chapters, how he got caught up in the criminal escapades of his brother, and there are just enough hints at the final outcome along the way to keep the reader engaged. After a dozen situations where you will ask yourself “O.K. How are they going to get out of this jam?” you just have to keep reading to find the improbable answer. But even the final outcome has complexities that cannot be predicted in advance.
This is a unique, wild, and improbable but wonderfully engaging story.
The Passionate Reader 