Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street

One of the earliest Canadian noir novels, Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street tells the story of Gisele Lepine, beautiful farmer’s daughter who leaves her sleepy farming community for the neon lights of Montreal. In the fast-paced city, dreams quickly turn to nightmares as the young ‘farmette’ finds herself surrounded by drug-dealers, newspapermen, nightclub owners, chorus girls and a fatherly boxer who is well past his prime. It’s all a bit too much for innocent Gisele, who hasn’t yet had to deal with the violence that is to come. All becomes a whirlwind set in the post-war ‘open city’ in which burlesque houses were plentiful, Dorchester Street was lined with nightclubs and Decarie Boulevard served as Canada’s Sunset Strip.

News Stand Library was unique amongst Canada’s early paperback publishers in offering titles with dust jackets. Produced exclusively for the American market, each covered a different illustration by a different artist. This new 2024 Ricochet Books edition features the illustration used on the 1950 jacket. Sadly, the jacket artist has yet to be identified.

Al Palmer (1913-1971) covered the police beat for the Montreal Herald before becoming one of its featured columnists with “Man About Town.” He moved to the Montreal Gazette where he wrote the widely-read column, “Our Town.” His Montreal Confidential was published in 1950, and re-issued by Véhicule Press in 2009.

Will Straw is the James McGill Emeritus Professor of Urban Media Studies at McGill University. He is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America (Andrew Roth Gallery, 2006), and the author of over 200 articles on journalism, cinema, music and urban life. His current research focuses on the night-time experience of cities.

The consulting editor for the Ricochet series is Brian Busby. His blog is The Dusty Bookcase.