Dead Man's Ticket

I also found this book on the Vancouver ferry, last summer, on board to Victoria. What a pleasure it has been to read this book! I love the prose style. It must be Trower's poetry skills that make his word choice so good. Trower always uses the perfect word. He uses the 1950s slang of the Vancouver sub-culture, but the expressions always fit, and he never gets repetitious with words. They seem fresh all the time. The prose is always neat and clean, precise, and never wordy. The pace of the action is perfect. The characters are alive, and there is lively action. There is a main plot and an important sub-plot, both of which tie up just right at the end. I have read passages to students in my college English classes to illustrate the easy and clean style of writing. I cannot say enough good things about the book. If you are looking for highly intellectual stuff, no, this book is not for you. But if you want a lively, exciting book about a distant place and time, this is the book for you. I have ordered Trower's two other novels.

I picked this book up on the Vancouver ferry as something to read by a local author. It turned out to be a very enjoyable read. Trower writes in an almost autobiographical style that makes you feel that the characters are real people doing real things. The topics covered in the book seem to be very down-beat--the endless cycle of logger's lives between Skid Road, the Logging Camps, Booze and Heroin, but the book is far from down beat. The characters are well developed and believable; they are treated with respect and each play an interesting roll in the story. The story-line weaves about through themes that let the author illustrate the life and times very well, and in the end conclude with an ending that fits the story yet is creative enough to make the reader happy. All in all, a very good book about an odd-slice-of-life that is interesting to see recorded.