HEARTS OF STONE

An Ontario felon-turned-farmer seeks justice against the petty criminals who casually destroyed his household.

Mostly, Carl Burns just tries to keep his head down while helping his girlfriend, organic farmer/TV personality Frances Rourke, work River Valley Farm. But Stanley "Chino" Carter has other plans. Facing a mounting and unpayable gambling debt to Johnny K, who’s not the sort of man to forgive and forget, he teams up with Larry "Bug" Murdock and Billy Taylor, an unemployed Mohawk with the incomparable advantage of having no criminal record, to smuggle drugs across the U.S. border. When that episode leaves Chino still short, he and his two sidekicks stage a home invasion at River Valley Farm, reasoning that since Frances is on television, she must be worth at least $1 million. This enterprise ends still more badly, leaving one person dead and Frances’ farmhouse burned to the ground. Though Carl can not only identify Bug as one of the perps, but spots him, gives chase, and ends up literally dumping him in front of Detective Rachel Pulford of the Rose City Police, dapper ambulance-chasing attorney Pearce Walker, who’s attached himself to Bug, claims that Carl, who was already convicted once of arson (Rough Justice, 2016), staged the scene and set the fire himself. And Frances, who’d normally back up Carl’s identification in a heartbeat, lies in a coma as the days turn into weeks.

Smith’s unsparing depiction of a small-town justice system that depends on “everybody’s ratting everybody out” works against mystery and suspense but allows a sense of monstrous injustice to fester till it’s ready to explode.