Shovel Ready

Shovel Ready
By Adam Sternbergh

Adam Sternbergh, who grew up in Toronto, sets his debut novel in his adopted hometown of NYC after the Big Apple has been hollowed out by a dirty bomb planted in Times Square. Spademan is an ex-garbageman turned hitman who is approached by a sinister televangelist looking to ice his runaway daughter. We are clearly deep into neo-noir, cyberpunk territory here, but Sternbergh snaps the reader through all of the now familiar conventions at a brisk pace, flavouring the proceedings with a level of cruelty and violence surprising even for this genre.