Tommy Marlow is surprisingly likable for a guy who mugs people for their laptops. Unfortunately for Tommy, the girl he just robbed was the daughter of a psychotic and high ranking member of a notorious motorcycle gang. Even worse, the laptop he stole contains proof of some gruesome murders and the location of a huge stash of their money. Totally broke and marked for death, his only shot at surviving the week is to rob the motorcycle gang, use the cash to get out of town, and hide out on the small Canadian vacation island where his mother now lives.

What follows is a whip smart black comedy filled with crackling dialogue and competing interests as various people try to arrest, kill, save, or rob Tommy. Among them there’s Greta, the manic pixie dream assassin sent to kill him, a small time meth cook who was recently bit by a rabid dog, and a burnt-out retired Chicago cop prone to quasi-philosophical ramblings named Alan Mouse, but who everyone calls Mousey. Inhabiting all of their voices, Battershill deftly combines delightful chaos, sharp wit, and surprisingly profound conversations on this quiet island, that’s not going to stay quiet for very long.

 Andrew Battershill is the author of "Pillow" (Coach House Books, 2015). It was longlisted for the 2016 Giller Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s M.A in creative writing program, Battershill was the fiction editor and co-founder of Dragnet Magazine