Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book and for The Globe 100 Books in 2013.
"In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read."
- Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers
Internationally acclaimed author Lisa Moore offers us a remarkable new novel about a man who escapes from prison to embark upon one of the most ambitious pot-smuggling adventures ever attempted.
Here are bravado and betrayal, bad weather and seas, love, undercover agents, the collusion of governments, unbridled ambition, innocence and the loss thereof, and many, many bales of marijuana. Here, too, is the seeming invincibility of youth and all the folly that it allows.
Caught is an exuberant, relentlessly suspenseful, and utterly unique novel, and promises to be the astonishing Lisa Moore’s most accomplished work to date.
Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of February and Alligator. February won CBC's Canada Reads competition, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year, and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Alligator was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), and was a national bestseller. Her story collection Open was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a national bestseller. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
The reader can only marvel at the precision of Moore's observations.
There is so much more to praise Moore for. The novel is rich with her subtle injections of humour, her careful pacing, and her clear yet coarse dialogue that leaves just enough unsaid. Of course, it also lives up to the ultimate test of a thriller – there is no doubt that this is a page-turner.
Lisa Moore’s new book is a beautiful piece of writing…
…in Caught Moore has clearly set out to challenge the conventions of crime writing.
As trippy, mellow, and revelatory as Hearn’s weed, Caught takes pleasure from rewriting crime formulas and gives pleasure in doing so.
In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read.
[T]his novel that is rife with realness, and beauty, and tension; so much it hurts, in the best possible way.
…Caught proceeds like a lit fuse.
This is an author who grips you with her impeccable use of language. The novel walks a great line between paperback levity and psychological intelligence—exactly what you want in a summer read.
...witty, retrospective, eloquent and exciting. Moore has crafted an old-timey adventure with good guys and bad guys — who are also one in the same.
Even we, as readers, will be caught by the timbre and skill of Moore’s storytelling and her careful sculpting of characters.
With linguistic verve and a magnified curiosity about whatever passes through her field of vision, Moore elevates the cops-and-robbers subgenre to literary respectability.
…precise, compressed, intimately rhythmic, mesmerizingly smart.
...Moore’s Caught is a fantastic read. It’s a rapid ride, with a strong current of tension that never lets up.
Caught is a pleasure to read. The narrative is cohesive and propulsive, but it’s Moore’s mastery of language and image that sets her apart.
Moore's ability to conceal a drum-tight plot line and an unflagging fidelity to the thematic pillars of Caught—mistakes and luck, trust and doubt, consequences and freedom—in the cloak of rough-and-tumble prose is something to behold.
…sharp lines, seedy characters and the kind of can’t-put-it-down suspense you might expect from a dime store detective novel but with Lisa Moore-level construction, detail and meticulous prose. This isn’t Moore slumming it in suspense fiction—but genre elevation…
A superbly written novel that crosses literary boundaries, Caught will surely garner [Moore] even wider readership.
[Lisa Moore’s] written a new kind of legend for a new Newfoundland.
Moore’s prose is as vivid as ever...
Caught is an outstanding novel, combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller.
Good read
It was a really good book that kept me on my toes the whole time.
Can't wait to see it come to life on the small screen on CBC (Winter 2018)!
Cheers