‘Seriously, someone turn this book into a movie’*
Ocean Drive
by Sam Wiebe
Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024
$24.95 / 9781990776694
Reviewed by Jessica Poon
*
When I was in high school, I was friends with a skilled liar. I asked her what her secret was and she said without hesitation, “You have to believe the lie.” At the time, she was fourteen years old and dating an eighteen-year-old boy and her mother would most certainly not approve. And so, my friend lied. Copiously. She lied about her sexual activities, her drug use, and what she was doing. She lied to sell shoes at Foot Locker. Her mendacity was her reality.
Uncannily enough, I thought of this friend while I was reading Ocean Drive, a tightly-plotted crime thriller by New Westminster’s Sam Wiebe (Sunset and Jericho). Cameron Shaw, found guilty of manslaughter, has been released on the proviso of three years of parole, arguably a prison of its own. All he wants is to avoid further crime and imprisonment; however, a trouble-free existence proves difficult. Straight out of prison, a lawyer named Zoe Prentice offers Cameron the possibility of acting as a double-agent, which he initially rejects.
And so, when Cameron eventually capitulates to capitalism after a workplace injury and Zoe Prentice’s offer becomes irresistible, Cameron finds himself actively entrenched in crime and violence. His urine tests are negative because someone else is pissing on his behalf. The duplicity he enacts must be convincing. The relative ease with which Cameron takes to crime makes the duplicity seem, well, less duplicitous. Maybe this is just who he is. Maybe he believes the lie.
Meanwhile, Meghan Quick, staff sergeant, divorced mother, and newly enlightened about rising crime levels in White Rock—a city she once escaped, only to move back—is trying to figure out who is responsible for Alexa Reed’s death. It’s a classic instance of exacerbated curiosity because wealthy white girl. Alexa Reed’s death causes Meghan to scrutinize her theretofore ignorance about White Rock’s crime. Alexa Reed’s aunt, Elizabeth Garrick—who happens to be the wife of the man Cam Shaw killed—has ambitions to start a new casino, which sounds like the perfect ingredient to exacerbate crime. Corpses continue accumulating; violence is frequent; there’s transactional sex, animalistic sex, and zero romance, which is apt. Although I never feared for either Cam or Meghan’s lives—this isn’t Game of Thrones—the body count did stack up.
Wiebe’s characters inspire thought-provoking questions. For instance, what happens when a young man whose prefrontal cortex isn’t even fully formed, spends three years in prison? What does it mean to be free when your choices are between honest work and little money and crime with plenty of remuneration for a recently released inmate? It seems either choice is damned. What could make a beloved daughter attending a prestigious American university so unhappy and morally unscrupulous? Is interracial love the solution to everything? (Spoilers here, but the answer to this one is lol no).
How do staff sergeants sometimes get so preoccupied with endless bureaucracy that their ability to observe basic happenings—more crime, more death, more drugs—seems delayed to the point of being upper middle-class tone-deaf? The chasm between the fortunate and the damned is a tale as old as time, but Wiebe depicts the discrepancies between Cameron Shaw and Meghan Quick well. Naturally, both Cameron and Meghan are negatively predisposed towards each other, determined to keep the other person in a specific slot of mutual antagonism. And yet, there’s more to the other, than they can perceive from their vantage points.
Given Cameron’s acute fear of returning to prison, he’s less inclined than Meghan to suddenly develop an awakening of Meghan’s complexities and nuances as a sympathetic, not-one-of-the-shitty cops. Meghan, though, after the death of Alexa Reed, is reeling over her long-maintained ignorance of increased crime and also comes to learn that there is more to Cameron’s manslaughter than initially revealed. Wiebe expertly deploys and withholds information strategically as the novel paces along, so paternity dénouements and back-stabbings slap like an episode of The Maury Povich Show. Though the novel has no shortage of grimness, there are also some marvellous one-liners like “You have a better chance of getting a blow job from the First Lady than getting your money” and “He gets more white pussy than a Bond villain.” Seriously, someone turn this book into a movie.
Overall, this novel is hardly a fulsome antidote towards capitalism and gaping class discrepancies; in fact, it’s quite the opposite, but that’s what makes it such a good, downright scathing read.
[*Editor’s note: A series, maybe. As of 2022, Wiebe’s Wakeland novels have been optioned for development into a series for television.]
*
Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has reviewed books by Amy Mattes, Louis Druehl, Sheung-King, Loghan Paylor, Lisa Moore (ed.), Sandra Kelly, Robyn Harding, Ian and Will Ferguson, Christine Lai, Logan Macnair, Jen Sookfong Lee, J.M. Miro (Steven Price), Bri Beaudoin, Tetsuro Shigematsu, Katie Welch, Megan Gail Coles, and Ayesha Chaudhry for BCR]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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