Victory?

Sidney Allinson is the editor at the Royal Canadian Military Institute
and author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

Considering the drama inherent in separatism, it is surprising so few
Canadian novels have been based on the subject of civil war in Canada.
Perhaps there’s a clue to this lapse in the fact that this author
writes under a pen name. Of course, we do not really know whether his
use of a pseudonym stems from anticipation of politically correct
critics or from personal reticence. Regardless, Marlowe does a
first-class job of crafting a fictional shooting war between a
revolutionary Quebec and a federal government faced with armed
insurrection.

His villains include characters we all love to hate: a gang of nasty
terrorists, venal politicians, Ottawa mandarins, and interfering CIA
agents. None of them are clichés, either; Marlowe parades heroes,
patriots, and cowards where we might not expect them—just as in real
life.

While entertaining the reader, Marlowe also manages to be
thought-provoking beyond the thriller genre, and he presents potentially
tragic grievances from both sides of the issue. As well, he brings out
some unsettling truths about Canada’s military unpreparedness, even in
the face of civil war. A former major, he makes his first-hand soldierly
knowledge obvious: some of his best scenes involve army interaction with
civil powers, intelligence procedure, and combat realities.