Social alienation on Vancouver’s streets pervades stark novel
Detective thriller has strong sense of location, from gritty to scenic Sam Wiebe proves himself to be an accomplished writer.
Vancouver is a city in crisis, and nowhere is this more evident than in the literature coming out of the embattled West Coast outpost.
Books set there contain a hallmark tension: the chilled-out vibe and breathtaking beauty pushing up against the dark underbelly of a town now out of reach for all but the global elite.
Indeed, nostalgia for Lotus Land’s lost character pervades the canon’s pages, highlighting the banishment of folksy communities, artists, families, the poor and the young to parts unknown — and the swift demolition of heritage architecture. In place of all this: Lamborghinis, luxury condominiums, social alienation.
These forces come into play in local author Sam Wiebe’s excellent new novel, Cut You Down, which proves a study in both riveting crime writing and stark social realism.
The book is the second in a smart series about private investigator Dave Wakeland. (The first, Invisible Dead, was shortlisted for the 2017 City of Vancouver Book Award.) In this outing, Wakeland is called on to find Tabitha Sorenson, a college student who’s disappeared amidst a corruption scandal in student government. With half a million dollars missing — and signs pointing to a complex web of career criminals — the clock is ticking.
Accompanied by his ex-girlfriend, a police officer named Sonia Drego, Wakeland embarks on a nerve-wracking, high-stakes odyssey that takes him from dives on the city’s notoriously gritty Downtown Eastside to ferries on the scenic coast and, across the border, eerily overgrown farmlands in Washington state — all the while seeing enough action to keep readers on the edge of their seats.
A rising star in the local scene, Wiebe proves himself an accomplished writer, and one in possession of a developed voice and a solid sense of craft. Wakeland is a compelling character: troubled, sometimes troubling, always engaging.
By far the most absorbing element of this novel, though, is its vivid sense of place. Wiebe takes the raw material of Vancouver’s societal breakdown and fashions it into a highly readable crime novel — not to mention a statement on the times.