If this novel is ever made into a movie, it will be called a road movie of sorts. For that’s what No Good Brother is, a road movie of a novel. Tim Harding works as a deckhand on a fishing trawler. Come the end of the fishing season, the crew are washing down the ship and stowing away the equipment when Tim’s brother, Jake, shows up. Jake is an ex con, a drifter, and a dreamer, a man who tends to slide from trouble to trouble.
Jake tells Tim that he needs help repaying a debt. Tim senses that no good will come from him agreeing to go along with his brother, but Jake is nothing if not good at manipulating his older brother and tugging on his heart strings. This is especially true because their sister, Sandy, the anchor who held their family together, died in a hit and run a few years back. The loss of Sandy left the brother’s bereft and Tim believes Jake wouldn’t have gone so off the rails if it wasn’t for her death.
So it isn’t long before Tim, against his better judgement, agrees to assist. Jake tells Tim the job is just a simple one, that to repay his debt they have to drop something off for the Delaney’s, a violent crime family. Tim reckons on the job being a drug drop or something similar and is alarmed to learn that it is in fact to steal and transport a race horse. What’s more, they have to transport the horse across the international border, from Canada to the United States. So begins a madcap journey across country, the brothers first trying to transport the horse by land, before stealing the boat Jake worked on and transporting it by sea.
No Good Brother is a novel of many levels. On the surface, it is a crime novel: the brothers commit a crime, the stealing and transferring of a horse, and there is a gang of violent criminals pulling their strings. On a broader level it is a journey, a tale of two men travelling the ocean. I have zero nautical knowledge, but the author seems to know his stuff; the book is packed with information on how Tim sails the boat and navigates the open sea. This isn’t info dumped, but rather perfectly calculated to the tale, so that the author spins what feels to be an authentic story. There’s a real sense of the environment the brothers find themselves in, a sense of place if you will, the ocean brought to life. But so too is Canada. If like myself readers haven’t visited the country, it’s easy to imagine the picture postcard vision: forests, bears, Mounties and Maple syrup. Here is a grittier Canada of working class men scraping by, dive bars and violence.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this is a story about relationships. Road movies and their novel counterparts are about personal growth, the characters’ internal journeys mirroring the external, as they learn something important about themselves. No Good Brother is no exception and the brothers, their relationship rocky at the outset, learn some hard truths and gain insights, some not too welcome, into each other and their shared histories.
I thoroughly enjoyed No Good Brother and Tyler Keevil is an impressive and talented writer. One of the reasons I review books is for the opportunity to find new authors whose work I can enjoy and this is one such author. I will definitely be checking out his back catalogue.
4 out of 5 stars
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