Brad Smith (1) (1935–)

One Eyed Jacks should be right at the top of every bestseller list. It's that good. Smith created an absolutely breathtaking novel that slowly builds in tension from beginning to end. I really liked how it began at such a slow pace and how each of the characters developed.

It's Toronto and the nearby farmland in the late fifties and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley are the biggest stars anyone's heard of and everyone wants to know who is going to be the next heavyweight champion of the world. Two washed up and dead broke old boxers, one Canadian (Tommy Cochrane) and one a Black man from Missouri ( T- Bone), leave their old De Soto to rust when it stops and hitchhike their way north. It's where Tommy's old family farm is - that is if he can ever get the dough to buy it before his brother in law puts it up for auction.

Of course, it wouldn't be dramatic if the old boxer didn't get a chance for one last fight against an up and comer, a bruiser with no brains but his eye on a pathway to Madison Square Garden and the championship belt. And of course the story wouldn't be complete without Mac the conniving promoter who will do anything in the book to get his fight.

There's also Tommy's long lost love, Lee, back from Hollywood where she never made it big, but up in Toronto every man has his eyes on her as she strolls across the room belting out torch songs with a jazz ensemble at the Blue Parrot.

Throw in a guy obsessed with horse races and gambling, a guy with Brylcream in his hair, a .38, and a cheap suit, and a guy who makes stag movies. Each character perfectly etched.

What you have here is a great story that just purrs along like a sleek racing car. It's a story about good guys and bad guys, about the meaning of friendship, and a terrific love story. It's a fight story that involves a couple of fighters and training for a big fight, but, on the whole, it's not really a boxing story.

Smith does a great job of encapsulating the era and the life of the nightclubs and boxing gyms and the scuzzy characters circling around the periphery.
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Rough Justice is the first of a new country-noir series centering around handyman ex-con Carl Burns and takes place in a fictional Rose City & its nearby farming communities in Southern Ontario.

Carl Burns is not as front and centre in this first book as was farmer ex-baseball player Virgil Cain in Brad Smith's previous trilogy. There is not as much wily outwitting of corrupt urban types and as much banter. This is offset by having two strong female protagonists in Burns's sister-in-law Frances and his estranged daughter Kate.

There are two major plots here, one involves a sexual abuse case vs. a celebrity defendant (in this case, the ex-Mayor of Rose City) and the other a landfill/dump site scheme to push out farmers and present a toxic threat to the remaining community. It may not mean as much to others, but in Toronto and Ontario, the fictional defense attack of the prosecution witnesses here is particularly chilling when read against the early February headlines of a local ex-radio celebrity on trial for alleged assaults.… (more)