Let It Ride by John McFetridge

Let It Ride Reviews

• 
  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.
• 
  Jim Thomsen

  "The guy actually laughed and said have a nice trip, waving him through, twenty-eight-year-old black guy from Detroit driving a brand-new Mercedes ML370 SUV, leather interior and twelve-speaker surround on his way to Toronto to meet with some bikers, sell them a truckload of Uncle Sam’s guns and set up a pipeline for their coke and weed back to Detroit, stepping up to the big leagues."
  
  LET IT RIDE is like an Elmore Leonard story shot through with extreme stimulants. It's aptly named, as I find the best way to read such a story is to release myself from following the plot and simply taking the ride on a smooth smooth surface of sharp dialogue. The Leonard comparisons are inescapable, too, however reductive they are: the cool, level sentence-fragment style makes it as a clear as a smile and a bullet. And John McFetridge owns it all with a wink and nudge:
  
  “'That movie, J-Lo and Clooney. It was based on a book. Man writes them in Detroit. Old white dude, like eighty years old, you’d never guess that.'"
  
  "Sunitha said, yeah? 'Who the f**k reads books?'"
  
  And:
  
  "They’d been walking around downtown, went for lunch and to a couple of bookstores, Sunitha asking him if he wanted to pick up anything by that old guy in Detroit, writes the crime books, but Get said no. Didn’t tell her he had them all."
  
  Nothing wrong with that, as McFetridge does the homage well and with a loving touch while showing off a tableau Leonard never touched: the other side of the border from Detroit. I learned a lot about Toronto and its struggles with diversity, gentrification, growth and identity that I might not have otherwise:
  
  "Back then Toronto was like the world’s biggest hick town, like a kid brother always looking up to Chicago and L.A. and New York."
  
  "This was Toronto, nobody worried about crime here, it was New York run by the Swiss."
  
  “Toronto’s always comparing itself to somebody,” Sunitha said. “They like it to be New York, you know, or even L.A., but they talk about the waterfront being like Chicago’s and now they’re starting to mention Detroit more.”
  
  In sum, while I was never completely clear on who did what to who or why, I let myself ride on LET IT RIDE, and enjoyed the journey immensely. It's the sort of book that feels like a beloved re-read even as you're reading it for the first time; you find yourself savoring the textures, the music, the flow.
  
• 
  Nigel Bird

  The Saints Of Hell have pretty much sewn up the criminal world of Toronto. There’s still a mob of Italians and a rogue gang of bikers to share the turf with, but that’s not likely to be the state of play forever.
  The novel begins with Get, a US army veteran, transporting arms to The Saints in the hope that he can open up drugs supplies for his mother’s business in Detroit. While in Canada, he hooks up with his contact, JT, who shows him the ropes and reveals just how well-structured the set-up of the Saints is. He also introduces Get to a hooker, Sunitha, who has a few well-honed skills and a desire to pull off a major heist of her own.
  Circling around these threads is a police investigation into a killing, a look into the world of swinging couples and an insight into the lives of those at the top of a number of crime families, all of which are engrossing and tightly put together.
  It’s an interesting one to try and examine.
  First of all, this isn’t the book I was expecting from the opening sequences. I expected a hard drive towards the resolving of a murder investigation and a crash-bang-boom coming together of the crime syndicates concerned.
  Instead, the book took a much more considered route and was all the more satisfying for avoiding a simple journey from A to B and C to D.
  There are multiple points of view, each of which is thorough and distinct. Through them, as the world shifts and alters balance, there are explanations of history and personal lives that explain just how things to come to be as they are and why each of the next steps seems almost inevitable. The characters are trapped in their own webs of time and place and are what and who they are.
  Let It Ride smoulders its way through the action. It slowly peels off layers to reveal deeper flesh and each shift in viewpoint alters the perspective so that the need for an explosive ending becomes redundant. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of resolutions to be had – they are scattered through the novel as it moves on – it’s more that each answered question throws up something new to focus upon.
  I really enjoyed the style and the depth of this one. The characters are etched superbly and their interactions always ring true. There’s a lot in here about the changing of the city and the comparisons between businesses that are, on the surface at least, legitimate or not so. Issues of race, gender and class come under scrutiny in various forms and these are really well-handled (and within character, of course).
  My favourite aspect here is the dialogue. It’s put together as if it’s a work of art in itself and that’s from beginning to end. I found myself purring through the conversations and admiring the craft. It’s super stuff.
  
• 
  Maddy

  PROTAGONIST: Vernard “Get” McGetty
  SETTING: Detroit; Toronto
  SERIES: Standalone
  RATING: 3.25
  
  Vernard “Get” McGetty served in Afghanistan and returned to his home city of Detroit, where he is part of the leadership of a drug dealing network. At the urging of his mother, he decides to see if they can ratchet up the business. To do so, he hooks up with a Canadian he met in Kandahar. JT is the leader of the Saints of Hell and well connected in Ontario. Get is actually rather surprised at the sophistication of JT and his associates; they are thriving and rapidly expanding throughout Canada.
  
  It isn’t until Get meets Sunitha, an independent woman who has a decidedly criminal entrepreneurial bent, that he sees the possibilities to score big. She’s worked the massage parlors and moved on to robbery. She and Get have an instant connection, although neither entirely trusts the other. Sunitha lets Get in on a grand scheme to rob LT and company of the gold bars they’ve stashed away in preparation for buying cocaine from Colombia.
  
  Meanwhile, the Saints are under the microscope for another reason beyond their drug dealing operation. There was a strange double drive-by killing of a husband and wife returning from a swingers party. Detectives Andre Price and Maureen McKeon are getting nowhere fast with the investigation. Ultimately, they end up surveilling the Saints who seem to have a connection within the department.
  
  Billed as an homage to Elmore Leonard, I didn’t feel that LET IT RIDE worthy of the comparison. McFetridge excels at presenting a picture of the criminal world in Toronto; however, the book lost some of its edge with the Get/Sunitha relationship, which played out in a more or less predictable fashion. Although the dialogue was very realistic, I was disconcerted by a technique the author used when people were speaking. He had an odd way of using and not using quotes that I found jarring. For example:
  
  The guy said, oh yeah, and it’s not business?
  
  Vernard said, yeah, “I’m Jamie Foxx.”
  
  Although there were some interesting characters in the book, McFetridge didn’t clearly focus in on one or two of them to be the leads. Get/Sunitha seemed to be the protagonists, but then Price/McKeon would command the narrative for long segments.
  
  Those readers who like their crime fiction set in Canada will be well rewarded by LET IT RIDE. I think it’s safe to say that McFetridge has come up with a new take on Toronto, one that focuses on its criminal element rather than its tourist attractions.
  
• 
  Bernie Charbonneau

  This novel was okay. On the book jacket they compare Mr. McFetridge with Elomore Leonard, well that is a long stretch. This novel has a lot of dialoge which Mr. Leonard is famous for but to say he is in the same league in his story telling is in my opionon a comparison that is not fair. This is my first novel by this canadian author and as it was enjoyable I believe it to be more a fun read because the setting was in the Toronto area which is close to home. recommend for the setting and if you are interested in the biker drug trade.
• 
  Dan

  Quick read. Great dialogue.
• 
  Sean

  Too many story lines, but still really good.
• 
  Derek

  See the review at
  Murder on the Internet Express
• 
  Adam McPhee

  Sunitha the Torontoized version of Omar from The Wire was clever.
• 
  Annie Goldman

  couldn't finish this book. too many profanities per word. not for me.