Kaspoit! by Dennis E. Bolen and The Skeleton Dance by Philip Quinn
5:00 PM on Saturday Mar. 20th, 2010
The Manx Pub, 370 Elgin Street
5:00 PM on Saturday Mar. 20th, 2010
The Manx Pub, 370 Elgin Street
Kaspoit! puts speculative illustration to the most profuse series of crimes ever to take place on Canadian soil. Set in the lower mainland of Vancouver, the time is now—criminals are brazen, cops are cynical—and no one is trying to solve the disappearance of dozens of women. Throughout, the novel conveys a savage, dystopian depiction of a netherworld teeming with gangland crime, sexual exploitation, betrayal and murder. The language is neologistic—jarring and vulgar—creating an atmosphere dense with bloodchilling dread, hurtling the reader through sinister, malevolent scenes with a velocity rarely seen in contemporary fiction.
Taking place on the mean, formerly clean streets of Toronto before the century ticked over into the new millennium, The Skeleton Dance artfully depicts the human casualties and debris piled up around the downtown bank towers. Wiped out in the rush of the thousand-eyed crowd hurrying to beehive office cubicles, and unhinged by the death of a close friend, musician-turned-ad-copywriter Robert Walker drifts into a hallucinogenic, violent world of drugs, pornography, and murder. His oldest and closest friend, the successful criminal lawyer Klin Abrams, greases his descent by betraying him to the Diamondbacks, a motorcycle gang trying to control the Toronto drug trade.
DENNIS E. BOLEN spent twenty-three years as a federal parole officer on the streets of Vancouver. He is the author of four previous novels, most recently Toy Gun, as well as a collection of short fiction, Gas Tank & Other Stories. He lives in Vancouver.
PHILIP QUINN is a graduate of Trent University and Ryerson University and lives in Toronto and online at www.philipquinn.ca. His short stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of publications and in 2006, Lichen Literary Journal nominated his short story “The Bearded Mirror” for the Journey prize. In 2009, the Toronto Arts Council awarded poems from his book The SubWay first place in its Get Lit competition.
Taking place on the mean, formerly clean streets of Toronto before the century ticked over into the new millennium, The Skeleton Dance artfully depicts the human casualties and debris piled up around the downtown bank towers. Wiped out in the rush of the thousand-eyed crowd hurrying to beehive office cubicles, and unhinged by the death of a close friend, musician-turned-ad-copywriter Robert Walker drifts into a hallucinogenic, violent world of drugs, pornography, and murder. His oldest and closest friend, the successful criminal lawyer Klin Abrams, greases his descent by betraying him to the Diamondbacks, a motorcycle gang trying to control the Toronto drug trade.
DENNIS E. BOLEN spent twenty-three years as a federal parole officer on the streets of Vancouver. He is the author of four previous novels, most recently Toy Gun, as well as a collection of short fiction, Gas Tank & Other Stories. He lives in Vancouver.
PHILIP QUINN is a graduate of Trent University and Ryerson University and lives in Toronto and online at www.philipquinn.ca. His short stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of publications and in 2006, Lichen Literary Journal nominated his short story “The Bearded Mirror” for the Journey prize. In 2009, the Toronto Arts Council awarded poems from his book The SubWay first place in its Get Lit competition.