Switch asks readers to envision one of their worst nightmares come true – that your family is being held captive by a demented psychopath. Then the author asks you to travel down that road for awhile imagining what depths of depravity you might contemplate, what horrible lines you might cross to get them back safe. Switch by Grant McKenzie is a fast-paced page-turner. Switch is one of the quickest reads I have undertaken in awhile. I completed much of it in one weekend. Not because it was simplistic, but because it was so fast-paced and urgent I really needed to get to the end and find out if the hero rescued his family. The story is compelling and creepy and a bit in the tradition of James Patterson and Harlan Coben.
Sam is a somewhat down on his luck actor. He earns a pay cheque as a mall cop and bides his time between roles. He is best known for his high school drama roles and had one big break on Magnum P.I. So he is a bit of a celebrity, targeted partly because of that and partly for other reasons. When we meet him he is living in Portland doing commercials to keep his hand in the game having moved with his family from L.A. The prologue of the book begins with a murder, but a somewhat strange one, in that the murderer, a surgeon named Zack, seems conflicted. The conflict is complicated when it is revealed that Zack is being watched. The start of Switch asks the reader to be patient and to switch gears numerous times before coming to the true plot. It is the only confusing piece, a speed bump in the path of a really good but twisted story. I found this part of the book to be a bit awkward and off-putting. The prologue might have been moved or eliminated altogether to lend a better flow to this piece of the book. Jump then from the prologue to a family getting ready for bed, going through the rituals. There is someone watching this ritual remotely. The Watcher. He presses a remote control switch and punches a hole in the gas line inside the house and soon the house is engulfed in flames. Zack is mysteriously a voyeur to the crime. Sam is working the night shift as usual, a job he compares to glorified babysitting and he stumbles onto some kids robbing a candy store. The middle-aged actor believes himself shot, but it turns out the kids held up the store with paint guns. In the wee hours of the morning he leaves his job and heads home, only to be stopped by a police cruiser as he approaches the home he finds, engulfed in flames, body bags being carried out. His house is gone, family assumed dead. He is plunged into a physical state of shock that is very well captured here and then while immobilized with fear and grief, he is labelled the only suspect, grilled by police. Then he gets a strange phone call telling him his family is not dead, the unwitting news that forces him to become a puppet executing acts of violence and torture on command in order to get his family back. Is his family alive or dead? Who is Zack and why is he suddenly working with Sam? Is he on Sam’s side, or working with someone else? Can he trust this new partner? How will he get out of this unending cycle of violence? McKenzie, born in Scotland, lives in British Columbia and was a former crime reporter for the Calgary Sun. The kind of guy I used to work with toiling away with other ink-stained wretches while penning a novel at night. I love the opportunity to review Canadian authors and have been a big fan of all Canadian literature since high school. I am incredibly lucky to have been given a couple of really different, but intriguing new Canadian novels lately. This one Switch, is shocking, fast, and plot-driven, and it reminded me a lot of the James Patterson books. Imaginative in its depravity and psychologically thrilling. Switch is most fun when dropping clever cultural references to the 70s and 80s. Switch is a good read and a worthy edition to a growing body of crime fiction in Canada.

Enjoyable and fast-paced, if you can negotiate the rocky beginning.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$1/2 out of $$$$$
Switch by Grant McKenzie is in paperback. 432 pages. It is listed for $25.00 and published by Penguin Group Canada, a division of Pearson Canada Inc. First published in Great Britain by Transworld. The Penguin edition is 2010.

Disclosure: I am not paid for my reviews, but as is common in media, a copy of this book was provided to me for free in order to complete this review.