Kevin Smith (kvnsmith@colba.net)
Sat, 18 Sep 1999 17:06:38 -0400
Our Bill asks:
>Can anyone think of any hardboiled stuff set in
Montreal? There's been
>some news recently about the "Duplessis
orphans"--children handed over to
>Catholic churches by the long-serving premier,
Maurice Duplessis--and it
>reminded me that while he was keeping the entire
province fairly repressed
>in the '40s and '50s, Montreal was a wide open city,
with corruption,
>bribery, sex, jazz and all the rest. A perfect
setting. Does anyone know
>if it's been used?
This is a set-up, right? Did anyone think I wouldn't
bite?
Surprisingly, despite what I think are obvious (and
self-serving) advantages to using Montreal as a hardboiled
setting, it's been surprisingly underused. One of these days
someone will get it right. "Open" only begins to describe
Montreal back then (God bless Lili St. Cyr). And it's not
exactly repressed now, either. Hell, Chandler once even
referred to Montreal as "almost as crooked as we are" (in The
Pencil). It's a line I'm, embarassingly, more than a little
proud of.
There's THE MAIN, by Trevanian, which Paul (are you sure
that's your address?) mentioned, which is probably the best
use of Montreal as a setting. There's this year's CITY OF ICE
by John Farrow, reminiscent of The Main, actually, which is
certainly worth checking out (there's a review I did of it
for January Magazine somewhere at http://www.januarymagazine.com/
), and THE PYX by John Buell, a sort of hardboiled,
supernatural thriller
(he also wrote FOUR DAYS, a bank-robbing caper thing about to
be filmed), which is set in Montreal, but rarely feels like
it's really using the city to the book's advantage. Kathy
Reichss currently uses Montreal, but her forensics-as-porn
books are really amateur sleuth tales trying to cover
themselves in body parts to look tough. At their centre,
though, they're still pretty mushy.
There've also been several attempts at establishing a private
eye series here, but the only two that I thought were really
good were Russell Teed by David Montrose, and Mike Garfin by
Martin Brett, both written back in the
"open" days. Nobody's taken a serious crack at a Montreal
P.I. lately.
Various other writers have tried, with varying amounts of
success, to write P.I. novels set here, including Maurice
Gagnon (sissy stuff, mostly, and pretty poorly-written, as
well), Aleister Foxx (an astrological P.I., and no, I don't
think it's his real name either), Joel Newman (Anglo
paranoia), Plume Latraverse (sort of a French Kinky
Friedman-type), and Byron Rempel
(horny Prairie boy hits the big town and ends up working as a
P.I.). And Robert Parker's THE JUDAS GOAT was set here, but I
was disappointed by that one.
The late Brian Moore, before he became a high-faluting
literary writer, wrote a couple of hardboiled pulpy novels
set here, most notably SAILOR'S LEAVE (Wreath for a Redhead),
about a sailor who takes a wrong turn or two and ends up in a
"nightmare of violence and crime!" A real pulpy tale, that
Moore supposedly later denied ever writing, but already you
could see some of the themes he would focus on in his later
work (the unwanted outsider, sex as sin, good ol' Catholic
guilt and redemption, lonely women living lives of quiet
desparation).
There were also a rash of political thrillers, by both French
and English writers, about their various fictionalized
interpretations of the FLQ/terrorist actions of the late
sixties/early seventies (Brian Moore, now all respectable,
wrote one that was actually worth reading). Some of 'em were
hard-boiled, but most of them were just clumsy, and usually
paranoid, as well.
One writer who I'd love to see tackle Montreal in a
hardboiled novel would be Mordecai Richler. He's one of the
few local writers who can still manage to get almost everyone
in this town pissed off at him. Alas, his books are more
satiric comedies of manner than crime fiction, but his dark
humour, and his unrelentingly, unflinching contempt for
pettiness, and disgust for sham would serve him in good
stead, in a hardboiled novel. Duddy Kravitz, P.I.,
anyone?
Montreal's a hard city to pin down, and always has been,
historically. It's one of the very oldest cities in North
America, and it's always been not so much a cultural melting
spot, as a stir fry. It's been supposedly dying for the last
thirty years, yet it remains one of the most vibrant,
exciting cities in North America, where passionate people
argue loudly late into the night at bars and cafes, even as
the city falls apart around them, where strip clubs and
churches break up the shopping malls, bars and restaurants of
downtown, and hookers ply their trade on streets named after
Catholic saints. Crowds of 100,000 gather peacefully for free
jazz concerts on hot summer nights, but a nine-year old gets
killed by a car bomb in a quiet residential neighbourhood,
another victim our seemingly endless biker gang wars (I
wonder if our police force is the only one where promotion to
the detective division depends more on seniority than any
actual qualifications). And politically, it rubs almost
everyone in Canada the wrong way. For the rest of Quebec,
we're too English. For the rest of Canada, we're too French.
Yeah, it's the largest city in Quebec, but it used to be the
largest city in Canada, before various historical, economical
and political forces shifted the business centre of power to
Toronto, a fact we're all more than aware of. We're a feisty
bunch, and we may not all agree about Quebec or Canada, but
we're proud of our town. And I could go on and on, but I
won't. It would take, well, a book.
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
Still available! Our Summer Issue, focussing on Radio Private
Eyes, plus new fiction by Peter Parmantie and Kathy
Korty.
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