All Hat Book

All Hat follows Brad Smith's superb debut noir novel, One-Eyed Jacks, which was shortlisted for the Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Ellis Awards. That book marked him as a writer of real promise and that potential is confirmed in this equally entertaining and accomplished work. While One-Eyed Jacks was set in 50s Toronto and All Hat unfolds in contemporary rural Ontario, the novels share the themes of hope, redemption and revenge and each involves a risky attempt to raise cash for an imperilled family farm. The key antagonists here are ex-ballplayer (and ex-con) Ray Dokes and local bully Sonny Stanton, whose "all hat, no cattle" phony cowboy style gives the book its title. The pair's previous encounter left Sonny with a limp and Ray with a stint in jail and now Ray is back in his hometown, helping out horse trainer buddy Pete Culpepper and hoping to stay on the right side of both the law and his old flame, Etta Parr. Sonny, meanwhile, is lusting after even more wealth and power and his greed threatens not just the Parr farm but the entire community. In a scheme to derail him, Ray, Pete and their accomplices will have to tackle and trick him on his home turf, the racetrack. There are multiple pleasures to be had not just in navigating Smith's plot twists, but also in following his evocation of a milieu he obviously knows and loves. And his vividly drawn characters--Misty the stripper, Chrissie the tough-as-nails jockey, Sonny's simple-yet-decent hired hand Paulie--are all treated with affection. Sonny, of course, is a true bad seed, so the reader will race through the pages, eagerly awaiting his comeuppance. The unfolding tension and violence is neatly laced with some highly humorous scenes (the attempted hijacking of a stud horse's semen, for instance). Fellow ace thriller-writer Dennis Lehane accurately calls All Hat "an incendiary example of pedal-to-the-floor country noir". Bring on the next Brad Smith gem, fast. --Kerry Doole, Amazon.caRead More