Let It Ride by John McFetridge

Let It Ride by John McFetridge
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's not a mystery and it's not really a thriller (though it's labelled as both), but somehow this story managed to keep my attention pretty thoroughly.

It's a thinly disguised tale of what's actually going on in Canadian organized crime. One of the review quotes on the back cover praised McFetridge's imagination, and wondered where he could come up with this stuff. I figure the reviewer must have been American, because no Canadian could have missed many of these details: The Saints of Hell (read "Hell's Angels"); the Lone Gunmen (read "Bandidos" — the massacre of the Lone Gunmen happened pretty much as-written, to the Bandidos, just a few kilometers from my home); the ex-leader of the Saints, "Mon Oncle"  Bouchard and the ex-leader of the Hells Angels in Canada, "Mom" Boucher; even the arrest and trial of many of the narcotics officers who were supposed to be taking down these criminals. 

But the fact that the author used real events in the biker wars to back his story doesn't detract in any way from a pretty good read. 

I can't say I agree with McFetridge's apparent belief that we Canadians all really want to be Americans, but maybe I'm just putting his characters opinions in his own head. I do love the details about how the Canadian bikers, even though affiliated with the American gangs had their own constitutions that were more egalitatarian: they permitted blacks and ex-cops! McFetridge also pretty much nails Canadian racism: we all like to think we're less racist than America, and by and large we probably are, but there are still very real barriers to equality. Sunitha's father's story of immigrating to Canada from India, only to find that he'd never be allowed to be a Canadian in anything but name, is  too often heard.