Drug Overdoses in Canada by Paul Grant

 

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More than six thousand Canadians died from a drug overdose in 2025.  That’s seventeen people every day.  Almost one an hour.  Most of the ODs were from methamphetamine, fentanyl, or a combination of the two.  It’s as if the population of Merritt, B.C. was wiped out in one year.  That’s one of the reasons I wrote Notorious (BWL 2025).  

 

Drug addiction is not just a big city problem.  Small towns like Merritt, or Mirabel, Quebec, or my home of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, are no strangers to the ravages of meth addiction.    We see the users downtown, mostly men in their twenties or thirties, zombies ravaged by the drug that they crave more than food or water or a warm place to sleep.  

 

Notorious is a cautionary tale about the social chaos caused by meth addiction, even in a small town like Moose Jaw.  Downtown neighbourhoods hollow out as theft, street disorder and murder drive people to the leafy suburbs.  While the cops try to catch the killers, journalist Eleanor Bell enlists her pal Jamie Staryk to follow the drug money being laundered through real estate and other legitimate businesses, and Molly Hunter turns her farmhouse into a rehab clinic for young users. 

 

Notorious is a warning, but also a celebration of the grit shown by average people as they confront evil in their midst.  Each in their own way, Moose Javians push back against the greed and depravity of the drug business, and in doing so, save their small city.

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*Also by Paul Grant:  Astraphobia, a novel that follows three generations of a Sakatchewan farm family stalked by lightning.  Astraphobia is part of BWL’s Paranormal Canadiana Collection.