AN ORDINARY DECENT CRIMINAL

A Canadian writer debuts with a fast and funny tale about an ex-con going straight the crooked way.

As Montgomery Haaviko, Samuel Parker had been, in cop speak, an ODC: “Ordinary Decent Criminal.” Not a murderer or a rapist, merely your basic bothersome low-life, a confirmed abuser of illegal substances and quotidian laws. That was in his pre-Claire-and-Fred days—before Claire, his wife, and Fred, his baby son, authentic miracle workers simply by virtue of their existence—came into his life and, in effect, reinvented him. They took a chronic societal headache (read: drug addict and dealer, recidivist jailbird), steered him into rehab and, on his release, sparked a desire to be good, a condition he—along with virtually anyone who ever gave the matter thought—would have sworn was as alien to him as extra-terrestrialism. A changed man with a changed name, he was ready and eager to be domesticated. But the straight and narrow can be a rocky road for those who arrive there belatedly, and Sam soon realizes he has his work cut out for him. The Winnipeg PD, for instance, is taking his reformation with a grain of salt, which means that when he reacts with justifiable force to a brazen act of home invasion he finds himself in a police interrogation room, hands unkindly cuffed behind his back. Sam now has a declared enemy, a certain Detective Sergeant Enzio Walsh. Narcissistic, a born bully, Walsh hates it that Sam won’t tremble when he roars. And so the game’s afoot, a kind of blood sport. Both are serious players, each with a bag of nasty tricks and no inhibitory qualms. But it just might be that the streetwise ODC has learned to fight dirtier.

Exceptionally readable entertainment.