Interview and Review

An interview I did a few weeks ago with my own publisher is up on their website now:

http://www.ecwpress.com/[catpath]/john_mcfetridge_interview

An interview with your own publisher has to be the very definition of softball questions, but it is kind of fun.

Also this week, Scene magazine in London, Ontario reviewd Swap. There's no link, but I'm happy to post the whole thing here:

Following on the heels of the well-received 2008 release, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Canadian author John McFetridge returns to the gritty streets of Toronto with his newest novel, Swap. When a husband and wife are murdered in their car on a busy downtown onramp, their unusual deaths spark an investigation leading police into the darkest recesses of the city’s criminal underworld. All of a sudden Toronto the Good isn’t looking so good anymore, and in McFetridge’s vision, the multicultural metropolis seems to assume a personality all its own - brooding, worldly, corrupt. Typical demonstrations of underworld power are passé here, and biker gangs consisting of well-groomed men driving European sports cars or Hummers roam streets filled with peeler bars and massage parlors. On the other side of the tracks, the cops are in disarray – having been the subject of a recent internal affairs probe - and rifts have started to fracture the force. Detectives Price and McKeon find themselves following the finest thread of a lead in the married couple’s murder case to an exclusive Toronto swinger’s club, where their investigation really starts to pick-up steam. McFetridge’s readership will recognize some of the shady characters from his earlier book here – Richard, Nugs, J.T. - but that knowledge is hardly required to appreciate the story. The magic of the writer’s electric prose lies in his sense of pacing and his ability to create plausible dialogue between characters. McFetridge doesn’t judge their actions; he lays bare their motivations, and benefi ts from all the tantalizing narrative possibilities he finds there. Come to think of it, so do we. ~ Chris Morgan.



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