Strange Fugitive

Strange Fugitive, Callaghan's first novel - originally published in New York in 1928 - announced the coming of the urban novel in Canada, and we can now see it as a prototype for the "gangster" novel in America. The story is set in Toronto in the era of the speakeasy and underworld vendettas. Harry Trotter, the "hero," is a man who cannot check his predilection for brutality. Incapable of reflection, it would never occur to him that he has become a thug.He is all feeling. He wants to feel good, successful, important. If he feels good, things must be right. Given this, as Robert Weaver has argued, "there is a prophetic strain in Strange Fugitive." Harry reminds us "of the anti-hero of The Stranger, the novel by Albert Camus . . . and he has a link with something as contemporary and as subject to argument as the movie Bonnie and Clyde."

Morley Callaghan was the author of The Loved and the Lost, More Joy in Heaven, Now That April’s Here and Other Stories, Such is My Beloved, That Summer in Paris, and They Shall Inherit the Earth. He was a recipient of the Governor-General’s Award, the Lorne Pierce Medal, and the Order of Canada. James Dubro is an award-winning crime writer, a television researcher, and a producer. He has researched, written, and produced documentaries on organized crime, Cuba, the KGB, and the CIA which have appeared on CBC, PBS, and A&E. He is the coauthor of Dragons of Crime and Undercover: The Cases of the RCMP's Most Secret Operative. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.