The man who killed /

October 1926 in Montreal. Mick, a former med student kicked out for poor grades and, not incidentally, stealing morphine, decides to help out an old friend by providing a little muscle for a cross-border liquor-smuggling run. The allegedly easy trip goes seriously haywire, and now Mick is running for his life. A wonderfully entertaining journey through Prohibition-era Montreal's seamy underworld, this is the story not only of a guy whose life has descended into a hell of drugs and booze but also of a city making the uneasy transition from being culture-shocked and politically divided to cosmopolitan greatness. Nixon seems to have created his own argot for the novel, filling the book with inventive slang ( Jack eyed me slantwise ) and self-consciously wry dialogue. But he gets away with it because the story is told in the first person, and Mick's charismatic persona makes the lingo breathe. Told in a more traditional way, without its linguistic flourishes, the story might have been a passable thriller. But Nixon's highly creative presentation elevates it several notches. An agreeable mixture of noir, historical fiction, and style.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist

Set in 1926 Montreal, Canadian author Nixon's stylish and assured first novel charts the struggles of Mick, a 27-year-old WWI veteran, to make a life for himself. Obsessed with Laura Dunphy, a lovely young temptress who rejects his advances, Mick has slipped into a downward spiral of morphine abuse that has gotten him kicked out of medical school. Then his adoptive brother, Jack, appears with a potentially lucrative job smuggling contraband liquor across the border into the States. Mick soon finds himself in a shadowy world of shifting alliances that includes the Chicago mob, the Canadian government, and even Harry Houdini. Mick is drawn inexorably deeper into the underworld, at the middle of which is the cipherlike Jack, along with a memorable cast of supporting players. Like Raymond Chandler, Nixon possesses a poet's ear for the telling detail as well as the master's gift of combining street-level realism with jaded romanticism. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.