Even though I didn't finish this book (she confessed), I am certainly recommending it to my patrons who are looking for a new author in Crime Fiction. This is a gritty and edgy story, in which some of the cops are decent, and some of them are on the make; some of the criminals are just in it for the money, and some of them are nasty pieces of work that take joy in inflicting pain. In short, it is a fictional world inhabited by people in all their raw humanity.

The narrative is compelling, which ironically explains why I didn't finish the book. It paints too vivid a picture of a world I would prefer to deny. If you like your literature noir, but a little short of graphic forensics, this book may be right up your alley. ( )

A walk on the mean streets of Toronto, seen from the perspective of cops and criminals (though at times it's hard to tell the difference). A couple of homicide detectives try to figure out whether the man who took a dive off the roof of a highrise was suicidal or was pushed - and then wonder why cops in the narcotics squad are so eager to have them call it a suicide and close the case. A resident of the highrise is waiting for the end of her house arrest and is trying to figure out whether to throw in her lot with the man who wants to move massive amounts of dope and doesn't seem to know what he's getting into. Both cops and criminals are on edge, sensing there's a big shakeup in organized crime about to happen. McFetridge has the deadpan and often funny dialogue sense of mid-career Elmore Leonard, and the twists he ties things off with at the end are both cynical and satisfying. At least we can rest assured that McFetridge isn't going to run out of material anytime soon. My review can be found at RTE.

Kelli relaxed. She'd seen the inside of a lot of Beamers and Mercs and, hell, even Land Rovers since coming to Toronto a month back. She looked at the guy, cheapskate biz boy in his thirties, and thought he wasn't so bad, really, just acting tough. It was always good to get the first one of the night out of the way.

She looked up and saw a man's face, floating, hanging in the sky. He looked her right in the eye.

Then he smashed into the windshield.

The cheapskate screamed like a girl.

And Kelli just stared at the face on the spiderweb of broken glass. The blood and bits of brain and bone. He must have fallen the full twenty-five floors.
From Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

After the publication of his debut novel Dirty Sweet, the parallels between John McFetridge and that master of crime fiction Elmore Leonard were readily apparent. Both novelists concern themselves with criminals slightly less smart than they put on, and police slightly smarter than they let on. Both imbue their primary settings (Leonard has Detroit, McFetridge, Toronto) with a heady grit and coarseness that elevates the status of the cities above that of narrative backdrops to that of major characters. Both write deliciously crunchy dialogue which sting the reader with their own unique urban patois.

Now, upon reading McFetridge's second, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, it is apparent McFetridge is no mere clone of Leonard. Dirty Sweet was entertaining, but McFetridge could have settled at that point into a nice career as a second-rater with flashes of brilliance (read: Tim Dorsey). Everybody Knows showcases a writer coming into his own. Granted, the parallels with the master (what else could you call Leonard at this point in his career?) are still present, but McFetridge had broadened the distance between the two, creating a Toronto as dangerous-cool as Leonard's Detroit, yet somehow sharper, more angular. Leonard's Detroit is a grungy yet somehow loveable creation; you could see yourself living there, enjoying the dingyness. McFetridge's Toronto is permeated with grime and murk, both physically and morally. While his overall style may be closer to Leonard's, McFetridge's Toronto is far more malevolent in tone, closer to the bleakness of Ed McBain's fabled city of Isola in his 87th Precinct series [sidenote: Please read McBain, everyone. No better American writer of the police procedural has ever been produced.]. This Toronto is not a family-friendly city, but a metropolis of cynicism and spite; "[No] one noticed. Or no one cared. After all,it wasn't keeping people away from downtown shopping or bringing down real estate values. Toronto built its ghetto way out in the burbs, never thinking it was a growth industry."

McFetridge crafts a labyrinth and distinctly cinematic crime drama with Everybody Knows, flipping back and forth between drug dealers and police officers as they go about their daily routines. There's the detectives Armstrong and Bergeron, staking out a possible grow-op while embroiled in a missing child case; Bobbi, a woman with a faulty electronic tracking device on her ankle and a chance on making serious cash with her grow-op; Nugs, a thug with more smarts than you could guess; and more characters than can be easily accounted for. When you add in the mob, mcguffins, backstabbings and reversals, and dizzing subplots, you get one hell of a delicious read.

Plot-wise, Everybody Knows is a bit of a shaggy dog, with loose ends dangling everywhere, but that's part of its allure; these are a few days in the lives of its characters, where there is not so much a mystery as there is a confluence of circumstances that draws everyone together at different times. Where McFetridge really shines, much like as Leonard, is in his atmosphere, created by a narrative style so condensed and stark and frosted over by winter's chill it threatens to recast Leonard's already pared-down prose as overtly purple.

McFetridge is fast becoming the noir writer of the Canadian urban landscape (yes, there is too a Canadian urban landscape). Dirty Sweet hinted at the talent; Everybody Knows This is Nowhere stops hinting, and smacks you in the jaw. ( )

I really wanted to like this series about Toronto. Alas, if I'm not engaged with the main character(s) in the first 20 pages or so, I consider the book a dud and move on to the next novel. ( )