Caught

by Lisa Moore

Published 4 February 2014
"Moore combines the propulsive storytelling of a beach-book thriller with the skilled use of language and penetrating insights of literary fiction. She pulls it off seamlessly, creating a vivid, compulsively readable tale."--Penthouse

Shortlisted for the 2013 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Caught is a "propulsive, adrenalin-drenched" (Globe and Mail) novel from 2013 Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award winner Lisa Moore, which brilliantly captures a moment in the late 1970s before the almost folkloric glamour surrounding pot smuggling turned violent. Moore's protagonist, David Slaney, is a modern Billy the Kid, a swaggering folk-hero-in-the making who busts out of prison to embark on one last great heist and win back the woman he loves. As Slaney makes his fugitive journey across Canada--tailed closely by a detective hell-bent on making an arrest--Slaney reignites passions with his old flame; tracks down his former drug smuggling partner; and adopts numerous guises to outpace authorities: hitchhiker, houseguest, student, and lover. Thrumming with energy and suspense, Caught is a thrillingly charged escapade from one of Canada's most acclaimed writers.

"Outstanding . . . Surprising and superb . . . A literary adventure story . . . Gripping, detailed, and wholly convincing . . . A supremely human book . . . combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller."--National Post

"A new kind of legend for a new Newfoundland."--Reader's Digest

"Exhilarating... a memorably oddball and alluring novel that's simultaneously breezy, taut, funny, and insightful." --The Vancouver Sun