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Fog
Fog

Fog

FICTION

236 Pages, 5.5 x 8.5

Formats: Trade Paper, EPUB

Trade Paper, $24.95 (US $24.95) (CA $24.95)

Publication Date: June 2019

ISBN 9781771861847

Rights: WOR X CA

Baraka Books (Jun 2019)

eBook

eBook Editions Available

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Overview

A small plane was blown up in an act of sabotage over Northern Quebec, Canada. The incident was quickly analyzed and termed a mechanical failure. The case was closed in a rush. A young actor from Montreal dies in Afghanistan, killed by a missile from a drone. His death opens up wounds and discussions that are not in the public domain. These two seemingly disparate events form the backbone of a compelling contemporary "ideas thriller," set in Montreal's Main district and in the blue-green mountains of Kandahar. Past values, local history, neighborhood myths and intense psychosexual vectors are suddenly on a collision course with the current international context of wars, migration, exile, and terror. In the backdrop is the cold case of the airplane sabotage that occurred over a decade ago. Was the plane crash hushed-up? Why?   Three friends from Montreal's Plateau and Mile End districts manage to de-freeze the cold case, burn up the fog, and hell breaks loose, not only in their personal lives, but in their own affiliations.

Reviews

"A literate mystery/thriller set in Montreal (on "the Main") with side trips to Calcutta and Kandahar, this is a superbly written book about a neighbourhood, friendships, justice and belonging. Highly recommended." — James Fisher, The Miramichi Reader

"Fog is a literary thriller that will keep the reader engrossed from the first page to the last. Characters are engagingly & sensitively drawn." — Richard King, CBC

"… revigorantes the Neo-noir genre for the 21st century. (…) a fresh and thrilling addition." — Stacey Madden, Quill & Quire

"Bose is at his best when he's describing the neighbourhood, the particular way that disparate individuals living in proximity to one another come to form a fragile, almost invisible web of community. The Main of the novel is a lived-in space." — Yutaka Dirks, Montreal Review of Books

"Fog, as the title suggests, is about seeing through the mundane to discover new things, and yet never leaving the mist behind. Written with flowing lyricism, the novel reveals the deft hand of a seasoned writer in piecing together a seamless narrative. In this, Bose's decades of theatrical experience pays off. His characters are live, real and at times as confused as in a Shakespearean drama. It's Montreal in the first decade of the new millennium, and Chuck Bhatt meets Myra Banks. One an aspiring writer who appears bogged down in eking out a meagre existence as a shipping clerk. The other a peppy, gum-smacking millennial, whose personality fissures in the false starts of their relationship. A dental office is the first backdrop for their complicity. Myra is the receptionist, Chuck the patient and the dentist, Dr. Roberge, a conspirator in the downing of a small plane over Trois-Pistoles, Quebec. A convenient way to get Roberge's wife, a passenger on the plane, out of the way so he can marry his mega-rich mistress, or at least that is the conspiracy theory that snares Chuck and Myra. The delivery, years before, of a suspicious parcel by a femme fatale to Chuck at his shipping company is the clue to this conspiracy, and Chuck and Myra just have to piece together the rest. But before he can get to the bottom of things, Chuck is brutalized during a botched burglary of his apartment. While the murder theme provides a comfortable thread to Bose's narrative, the real pleasure comes from the characters drifting in and out of the Mile-End/St. Lawrence Street neighbourhood in Montreal. There is a sense of community in Fog that stimulates the imagination and soothingly draws in the readers. And not surprisingly, Bose manages to instill in the readers a genuine sense of affection for many of the characters in his novel. The author also does not pass on scoring a few political points in the story, particularly in criticizing western involvement in the Afghanistan war. While Bose stretches credibility in the passages in Afghanistan, overall there is a quiet realism in his narrative. Rana Bose is the author of two other novels and eleven plays and the founding editor the on-line cultural review Montreal Serai. These are significant accomplishments, but for my money, Fog is his crowning achievement. Fog is published by Baraka Books." — Ian Thomas Shaw, Ottawa Review of Books

Author Biography

Rana Bose is an author, playwright, poet, and dramaturge. Fog is Bose's third novel. He is the founding editor of Montreal Serai.