Dirty Sweet: A Mystery (1) (The Toronto Series) by John McFetridge

Dirty Sweet: A Mystery (1) (The Toronto Series) Reviews

• 
  Paul Weiss

  “Boris brought in chicks from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, all over eastern Europe … “
  
  The oft-heard moniker, “Toronto the Good”, was coined by mayor William Holmes Howland from the title of an 1898 book to showcase Toronto’s reputation as a shining representative of 19th century Victorian morality. By the middle of the 20th century, the most one could hope for when you heard the phrase was a wry smile at its outrageous irony. On Yonge Street, you couldn’t walk twenty paces without encountering a strip club, a hooker on the make, a tittie bar, a porn shop, a peep show or a rub and tug parlour.
  
  DIRTY SWEET is an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek, sleazy, frequently humorous but always dark tale of that Toronto and the interplay between biker gangs, the sex trade, the rise of internet pornography, murder, money laundering, and the clash for supremacy between international organized crime families. It’s a gritty, complex, and fast-paced debut novel that clearly places Canadian author John McFetridge into the ranks of contemporary crime and thriller writers to watch for.
  
  Paul Weiss
• 
  Tony

  American crime fiction grandmaster Elmore Leonard has lived for the past 80 years in Detroit, which is only about 150 miles from Toronto. So I shouldn't have been surprised that this Canadian crime book felt so familiar to me. It's pretty much a Leonardesque crime caper, relocated north of the border, complete with rat-a-tat snappy dialogue, and more angle-playing chancers than you can shake a Molson at. The story is pure Leonard: a struggling-but-striving commercial real estate agent named Roxanne recognizes the getaway driver in a daylight murder. But rather than talking to the cops, she decides to try and leverage this into something that will rescue her from the murky Scottish-Canadian mobster she's in business with. Next thing you know, she's knee deep in strip-club-owning Russian mobsters, a rugged internet porn producer, and even biker gangs -- not to mention the cops pursuing the murder case. As in Leonard's books, the seedier side of life is not played for prurience -- it just is what it is, and all the dreamers and criminals have their own interests and agendas to pursue. The plot is jammed with the kind of crazy scheming and deadpan humor that will be familiar to Leonard's fans, so if you like him, give this a try. It's not quite up to his high standard, but it's from the same menu.
• 
  Adam

  John Mcfetridge has crafted three (to date) interwoven novels set in modern Toronto a city filled to the brim with numerous ethnic groups, corruption, gentrification, and organized crime. The latter represented mainly by the Hell’s Angels (thinly disguised here) who have in recent years seized violent control of Canada’s rackets. Mcfetridge writes these novels as a dead pan documentaries moving from character to character (some appearing once, some as ongoing characters) from cops to crooks to create a patchwork of a city at work. Woven through each of these books is a variation on a classic Elmore Leonard style caper and each has a standalone plot, but they are better read as one long going novel. Lots of repetition here some good and some didn’t work (I never want to hear about bikers in golf shirts again) and dead pan humor and irony. Which one to start with, Dirty Sweet is the least essential, but the most fun so start there.
• 
  Mish Middelmann

  So I am reading the second of this guy's Toronto crime novels on my phone (Kindle gave up the ghost last week after four years of good service), wondering how come he talks so sensibly about life and leadership in such grungy surroundings?
  
  Sex, drugs and brutal violence are woven into the fabric of McFetridge's Toronto, dark underbelly to Canada's outward sweetness. And in the midst of all that, what I think he captures really well is the ability of some people to hold themselves together while crazy stuff is going on all around. To hold a vision and a purpose even when they can't see the endpoint. To be real and authentic even when the world is very evidently a pack of cards. To work with others who are manifestly not 100% reliable.
  
  Within the context that the vision of these characters is generally both criminal and selfish, the ones who succeed are those who have an ability to maintain a kind of integrity within the swamps. And definitely they are the ones who can hold a fresh enterprising vision in the midst of chaos and attract others to that vision.
  
  How come I don't often read leadership stories in "nicer" contexts that are equally clear about what it takes? I suppose they are being written - but perhaps they seem a bit too "nice-nice." In these gritty crime novels, there is a balancing of ugliness with humanity that rings very real and true to me.
  
  And of course, there is that thing about crime and business being more closely related than many would like to admit....
• 
  Rob Kitchin

  There’s a lot to like about Dirty Sweet. The characters and plot were entirely plausible. The dialogue was mostly excellent, although I did lose the thread in a couple of places. The moral ambiguity of all the characters, including the police, was realistic. McFetridge's knowledge of Toronto shines through and the story comes with its own soundtrack. And yet, what had the potential to be a five star review fell a little short for me. I think there are two main reasons. First, because the three main characters were morally dubious, self-centred and shallow, and there was nothing much appealing about the police officers, there was no-one to root for or will on. Second, the pace and tension remained relatively sedate, instead of being gradually ratcheted up. Whilst this was probably true to the story it meant the book never quite became the page-turner, edge of the seat read that it could have been. That said, McFetridge writes well and hooks you in early, and he does a good job of exposing the moral ambiguities we all face – how people get themselves into trouble, in spite of their best intentions, and then slide into another life on the promise of a quick solution; how greed, ambition and the frisson of risk provide fresh temptations from which it’s difficult to backtrack.
• 
  Paul

  Excellent. 4.5*
• 
  BLD

  This book wasn't my cup of tea. There was no mystery. I didn't like any of the characters so I didn't care what happened to them. The two cops were interesting characters but they had only marginal roles in the story. By the end of the book, I was bored and just wanted to finish it. I prefer books where the good guys win and the criminals go to jail.
• 
  Loren

  From ISawLightningFall.com
  
  Okay, you got me, I’ll admit it. I like Cheez-Its, and not just a few, but whole handfuls of crunchy, cheddary goodness. I like lazy Saturday mornings, too, forgetting the alarm clock and letting breakfast stretch toward noon while deliberately ignoring the shaggy state of my lawn. I like listening to bellicose rock, laughing at lolcats and reading slightly snarky political commentary. I also like novels that major in fun, unpretentious reads whose authors put serious character development and weighty sociological commentary second to unexamined enjoyment. Which, I suppose, is a way of saying that I like John McFetridge’s crime caper Dirty Sweet.
  
  All struggling commercial realtor Roxanne Keyes wanted was a Starbucks. What she got instead was a front-row seat to a mob hit, a shooter getting out of the passenger seat of a Volvo, putting three bullets into the brain of a guy idling behind him and then pulling away as calm as can be when the light turned green. She told that to the police when they came. But she didn’t tell them that she thought she’d recognized the getaway man, a Russian guy named Boris to whom she’d once tried to lease some office space. Roxanne isn’t unnerved by this newfound knowledge. She sees it as an asset, a way to cancel out a professional predicament, the kind of debt not recorded in ledgers or recouped by collection agencies.
  
  As you can probably gather from the title, McFetridge populates his first novel with unsavory sorts, a gaggle of mostly dim-witted ne'er do wells that indulge or deal in vices such as (breath) murder, theft, exotic dancing, arson, online smut, money laundering, fornication, drug use, grand theft auto, human trafficking and -- just for good measure -- music piracy. Fortunately, he mostly avoids prurient detail, keeping the nasty stuff in the spaces between sections or burying it in oblique transitions. And one shouldn’t think that the gritty matter or unsympathetic characters indicate a lack of literary chops. A keen sense of humor and an eye for the ironies of Canadian life (the book is set in Toronto) are in evidence page after page after page. Wry and rollicking, Dirty Sweet is a treat.
• 
  Teena in Toronto

  Roxanne is having a coffee at Starbucks when she witnesses a murder right front of her. Roxanne recognizes the driver of the getaway car but when the police question her, she doesn't tell them. Instead she figures she will use it to her advantage ... Boris, the driver, had been interested in renting office space from her recently and maybe this will convince him to do it.
  
  In the meantime, Roxanne starts dating one of her tenants, Vince, who owns an online porn company. Together they approach Boris with a proposition which hopefully he can't refuse.
  
  I loved that this book was set in Toronto and didn't try to hide it. The murder took place at the Starbucks on King Street W. Roxanne sat on the patio of the Wheat Sheaf drinking a Keith's beer (great patio and great wings). Stolen cars were loaded onto tankers off Cherry Street, just past the former Docks entertainment centre. Boris owned a strip club out by Pearson Airport. Roxanne and Boris have drinks at the Drake, which is in my 'hood. I've been to the Lion on the Beach pub (now the Stone Lion).
  
  This is the first book I've read by this author, who lives in Toronto. I really wanted to like it as I enjoy mysteries/suspense and I did for a while. But I found that the writing could have been tighter and that it dragged with too many mindless conversations. I didn't like any of the characters so didn't care what happened to them. By the end of the book, I was bored and just wanted to finish it. As a head's up, the language is for mature readers and there are adult situations.
  
  I won't be rushing to read more by this author ... just not my style, I guess.
  
  Blog review post:
  http://www.teenaintoronto.com/2015/04...
• 
  Stephanie

  I don't normally read crime fiction but John is a superb writer who really draws you in. Plus I know him so I couldn't not read it. Luckily, it's really good.
• 
  Brandon Nagel

  "Amazing dialog. Loved the music references. I cannot believe I have never read McFetridge until 2 days ago. About to start the next book."
• 
  Mar

  Liked the Toronto setting. Totally disliked everything else, especially the sex trade.
• 
  Craig Buck

  As others have pointed out, John McFetridge tips not only his hat, but his entire wardrobe to Elmore Leonard, and that's a good thing. Toronto comes alive as Dirty Sweet's cast of shady characters muddles through life and death. In the eye of the storm is the lovely Roxanne, as fatale as a femme can get, the kind of girl you can't help but fall in love with, knowing she's more toxic than a cyanide poutine.
  
  Porn, strippers, mobsters, bikers, drugs, murder and commercial real estate. What's not to like? If you enjoy sassy noir, you'll love this book.