by Nick Crowe ~ Knopf Canada
~ Review: Halifax Herald, April 17, 2011
Jasper is twenty-something, working for an insurance company and living in the suburbs of Toronto. His brother, Coleman, was odd throughout their childhood, worryingly obsessed about building what he truly believed would be a working space ship in the back yard. His affinity for alligators is not yet seen as a problem.
After a family incident (involving the space ship), Coleman walks out the back gate and never returns. Every effort to find him turns up nothing, but every birthday Jasper gets a call with silence on the other end.
One evening, while waiting for the subway, Jasper is pushed in the path of an oncoming train by a random act of violence. After seven months in a coma, he surfaces to find his girl friend has moved on, his job has evaporated and he has a lot of time on his hands. He comes to the stunning realization that his life so far is a life half lived.
His birthday comes once again, along with the annual silent phone call. But this year Jasper is able to identify the area code and with his ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend and the perpetually drunk Duane, he gasses up and hits the road, heading for Sanibel, Florida. Alligator country!
A Cold Night for Alligators is a road trip before it becomes a family saga after it becomes a mystery. It is loaded with quirky, funny characters, some endearing, some not so much. Crowe’s people don’t mince words or have fancy ways. They hit life with gusto, dealing with the fallout as incidental irritations. Threaded through the humour of Crowe’s writing is an undercurrent of mystery, of family secrets unresolved with Coleman right in the middle. What really did happen in the everglades all those years ago? A Cold Night for Alligators becomes a page turner with an ending that is very hard to see coming!
Nick Crowe has worked as a paperboy, dishwasher, psychiatric hospital janitor, laundry worker and guitar player before starting a career in television. He lives in Toronto.
