Review
I enjoyed reading this novel (with an exquisite jacket which captures a time and place perfectly), more than any other novel this year. There isn’t a wasted word in this wonderful depiction of Depression-era Toronto. Eli is a reporter who has just returned from a medical leave of absence. After meeting Mona, he becomes interested in the Jewish underworld of Toronto and the pickpockets who work Union Station. Mona is a stall who slows down a potential victim so her partner Chesler, known as a cannon, can pick his pocket. Eli and Mona begin a romance, which all her friends predict will end badly. Using Mona as an anonymous informant, Eli writes articles that capture the imagination of readers, and the interest of the police. The vernacular of the professional pickpocket is captured in precise detail. Here is a paragraph set in Union Station: “In the Great Hall a couple kisses farewell. Others bunch obliviously near the departure ramp. Mona wanders compliantly, all elbows, while she watches the back of the Hasid’s head. His yarmulke askew like a large crazy eye. Chesler clucks. Dawdlers begin to thicken around the announcement boards and Mona sets a new frame. Hips planted, buttocks sway with such discreet allure the Hasid almost ossifies. Chesler makes his move. His hands an argosy of want.” Reading this book is like attending a black and white period movie, perhaps one of the Thin Man series, where sly tough guys abound, and the “dame” is smart, glamorous and dangerous. I believe there is a City of Toronto Book Award; this edgy film noir novel should be a shoo-in.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
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Books in Canada
Book Description
Each minute this morning hangs perilously, like long cigarette ash. She flicks her wrist. Grey flakes fall onto the grey marble floor, and all around her is the click-click of shoes and dollied steamer trunks that rumble under the rotunda of the Great Hall. Her eyes are steady. Watches intently the line of suckers at the ticket window and the bills that emerge one by one from their pockets. The first is a fiver, the next two are singles. She smiles. See clearly now the corner of a ten-dollar bill and leans forward, budging the moment when they will begin to head her way. She takes another drag. Tendrils of smoke curl around her hand.
Here they come.
March 6, 1934. Hundreds gather outside City Hall to celebrate the Toronto Centenary. In the crowd, pickpocket Mona Kantor and her partner, Chesler, are ‘in the tip,’ finding easy pickings among the jostling masses. Eli Morenz, city man for the Daily Star, is covering the festivities and uncovering the pickpocket racket working the scene. A surreptitious photo and some keen research lead him to an underworld dive in Kensington Market where Toronto’s pickpockets converge – and to Mona.
Moving from a tense newsroom on King Street to the frenetic grift at Union Station, The City Man is a romance that begins in an instant and careens towards peril. Akler’s prose is as deft as a thief’s fingers, as precise and powerful as a heavyweight’s punch. Packed with enchanting, arcane period slang and comparable in its evocation of a lost Toronto to Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, this is a novel of exceptional grace, excitement and beauty.
‘Crafted period piece, sly crime novel, nouveau noir, edgy love story – this wonderful first novel outs not only its tremendously gifted author, but the city of Toronto itself. If Akler’s deft dance of pickpockets, hacks, cops, suckers, “stalls” and “cannons” stands at odds with the stale-bread image of Toronto the Good, that’s the idea. Who knew hard-boiled fiction could sidestep its own clichés so effortlessly?’ – Kevin Connolly
From the Inside Flap
‘Crafted period piece, sly crime novel, nouveau noir, edgy love story — this wonderful first novel outs not only its tremendously gifted author, but the city of Toronto itself. If Akler’s deft dance of pickpockets, hacks, cops, suckers, “stalls” and “cannons” stands at odds with the stale-bread image of Toronto the Good, that’s the idea. Who knew hard-boiled fiction could sidestep its own clichés so effortlessly?’ — Kevin Connolly
About the Author
Howard Akler was born in Toronto in 1969. He is the co-author (with Sarah B. Hood) of Toronto: The Unknown City (Arsenal Pulp, 2003).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Each minute this morning hangs perilously, like long cigarette ash. She flicks her wrist. Grey flakes fall onto the grey marble floor, and all around her is the click-click of shoes and dollied steamer trunks that rumble under the rotunda of the Great Hall. Her eyes are steady. Watches intently the line of suckers at the ticket window and the bills that emerge one by one from their pockets. The first is a fiver, the next two are singles. She smiles. See clearly now the corner of a ten-dollar bill and leans forward, budging the moment when they will begin to head her way. She takes another drag. Tendrils of smoke curl around her hand.
Here they come.
