Scratching the Flint

Scratching The Flint continues Vern Smith's Alex and Cecil franchise, a Toronto police series that examines the world of trying to do police work within the reality of corruptness. Smith has the knack of combining the gritty realism and day to day language of Toronto's streets with a witty prose that sometimes had no match in the way he could turn a phrase.

Smith uses Alex and Cecil to explore the arch type of police, from the wide eyed newcomer to the worn out old timer. And there's no better example of that than Alex and Cecil, the former just trying to survive to retirement and really doesn't care while the latter wants justice, especially when the guy he's looking for hits too close to home.

Smith does this again and again with Alex and Cecil which is worth rereading more than once. He keeps poking at caricatures of people, particularly street people and their unique relationship with cops. And often when you scratch the surface, there's more to people than you'd assume. In the end, Alex and Cecil are far more complex than you'd think at first glance.

***Disclaimer*** I was asked to ARC the book before I even knew who Vern Smith was, well before he won the award for it, and & wrote this review on my website way before I even though to write Flicking The Bic (this book's prequel), but I loved it enough to negotiate to write Flicking The Bic after I was done reading it. That should let you know how much I liked it.

Flint should not be Scratched without supervision.

Who the fuck is Vernon Smith was the first question I had when asked to arc this novel. Like I had never read anything about him or knew shit about his work. This one one of the few cases where my arcing skills got around and I was asked to write a cool little thing for the book. So I sat down thinking it was going to bore me and I could back out of it.

What a fucking pleasant surprise I read it cover to cover in about two hours because I just could not put it down until the end.

No matter what country you’re in, people love cop duos. Starsky and Hutch, Reggie and Cates, Riggs and Murtaugh, Cagney and Lacey, Crockett and Tubbs are the American standard on hard ass cops that go through a lot of shit but somehow avoid bitterness and keep their hearts of gold. Oh, and in the backdrop keeping them in line is one of the nastiest motherfuckers on God’s green earth keeping them in line. Could be a Captain, Lieutenant, Chief, whatever, but that crazy irate son of a bitch that is destined to die of a heart attack screaming at one of his officers that goes off the book too much is on the scene.

Vernon Smith’s Scratching The Flint says fuck all that, take my Canadian cop duo that defies all American buddy cop rules and deal with it.

Alex Johnson and Cecil (pronounced Sessil because he’s Canadian) are the detective dynamic duo in the anti-fraud department, with the former knocking on the sweet smell of retirement with what should be a simple gig and the latter being on the fucking job for way too long without walking around like a dog shitting tacks in a diarrhea fit. Alex is just tired and worn out and trying to make careful steps so he doesn’t spend retirement in a body bag. Cecil is the disillusioned cop like fucking Frank Serpico that feels victims should get justice and criminals should get theirs while following the letter of the law. People in hell want ice water and Alex and Cecil find out that Toronto’s Police Department isn’t interested in prosecution but how much they can make on the ass end of corruption.

Cecil pretty much bites his stiff upper lip until he and Alex are thrown into a fucked up situation investigating chop shop shit held by the best villain of all time Jean-Max Renaldo. I mean this guy is a true asshole that could bring Joker to his knees with his sadistic need to taunt motherfuckers he orders murdered as they die in the most fucked up conceivable ways imaginable. And yes, I love a good villain and totally am caping Team Jean-Max, the fucker. Anyway, Jean-Max is a smart Canuck of the French variety and ain’t even about to let two anti fraud cops get in the way of his chop. It ain’t shit for him to order somebody dead with everybody from the lawyers in the court system to the cops within the department to do his bidding via proxies to deliver information to him on how the case is going and taking out all his former employees that can incriminate him. That, he thinks will shut a few folks up. It does but it doesn’t, which leads to this paranoid spiral of him sending his Three Stooges out to kill anybody that he thinks might roll over on him. His paranoia is worse than a coke head locked in a plastic bag with a kilo of cocaine to the point he’d probably order the death of the person who could identify the smell of his farts if given a chance.

Cecil is in his motherfucking feelings when one of the witnesses, a homie from his stomping grounds that he promises to help out of a jam being involved with Jean-Max, gets executed in a manner that makes it hard eating and reading his death. He loses his faith in the Toronto legal system, the Toronto Police Department, and more importantly his superiors and his partner. He becomes a one man Jack Kersey Death Wish band when his subordinates seem not to care to investigate properly Jean-Max’s connection with his homie’s death. In other words like Axel Foley and his buddy that got killed, the Chief wants Cecil to stay out of it. Like Axel, he can’t do that and gets that time off pseudo vacation like Axel that lets him do his own investigation his way without Alex or anybody else keeping an eye on him so he doesn’t do something stupid like challenge Jean-Max into being his nemesis like Khan challenged Kirk without the scream.

That’s when things just spiral all to hell and we got us a story. This is literally like the beginning of the book, so you can just imagine what that disillusioned son of a bitch is about to do to stick it to Jean-Max. Trust me, Jean-Max ain’t likeable even though I LOVE LOVE LOVE him as a villain, so ain’t no love lost going after such a motherfucker that emulates the precise point where old dog shit on your shoe turns white.

Cecil ain’t letting shit go and neither is Jean-Max. Both of these bastards give zero fucks about rules, the law, and doing anything other than handling their business. Badge or no badge they both seek to get their fucking way even if it takes a consistent trail of bodies falling out of both bra straps to get it. This is war. Cecil is on the bivouac tired of traditional policing. Jean-Max is struggling, growing tired of correcting the incompetence of the idiots he keeps having do his dirty work. Both are holding on to their own personal moral code of ethics and morality, inciting damn near a riot on a crash course to settle scores and collect dues.

This book was just pedal to the medal action without trigger warnings the way nature intended. Oh, and it has the best sex scene with two old black buzzards in their 60s written by a white boy evah!

Now let me just make a note down here for the people that actually are going to go buy this motherfucker and sit down and read the shit out of it. It may be a little rough starting this bitch. This is a Canadian novel and as such is written in Canadian English. There is a difference getting into the swing and tempo of it if you’re use to the American pigeon English we speak so fluently, so you need to slow your roll and re-read parts that you might find challenging and get the vibe in the first two chapters before you take off like a bat out of hell speed reading this. The slang is definitely different but shouldn’t constipate you during your toilet reading time.

Now go and scratch that flint and buy two copies of the book, read one and give the other one out as a gift so people know you’re not a cheap bastard this year.