The new edition of Canadian Notes & Queries lands, and with it comes another Dusty Bookcase sur papier. This time the spotlight plays upon Ted Allan's Love is a Long Shot. Not the Love is a Long Shot for which he was awarded the 1984 Stephen Leacock Medal, but a cheap, pseudonymous pulp novel from a quarter-century earlier.
Published by News Stand Library in September 1949, two months before newspaperman Al Palmer’s
Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, this
Love is a Long Shot holds the distinction of being the first pulp noir novel set in Montreal. As I write in
CNQ, it ain't that pretty at all. The cover depicts, but doesn't quite capture, one of the darkest, most horrific scenes in any Canadian novel.
There's more to the issue, of course, including new fiction by Nathan Whitlock, new poetry by Nyla Matuck and – ahem –
praise for A Gentleman of Pleasure from George Fetherling.
