Colombia North circa 1978

In a start appropriate to a thriller, Caught, Lisa Moore’s latest novel, opens with young David Slaney escaping from a Nova Scotia prison in 1978 where he has been serving a long sentence for drug smuggling. Some years before, Slaney and his old friend and fellow smuggler, Hearn, had been caught in an unexpected fog off the coast of Newfoundland and had failed in their attempt to bring to shore two tons of marijuana from Colombia. The sly Hearn then skipped out on bail and disappeared while Slaney took the rap.

The first quarter of the novel is as suspenseful as a walk across a high wire as we feel Slaney’s stress and tension, when each thump on the door could be the knock of doom, the police coming to rearrest him and haul him back to prison. He explores the meaning of trust and doubt in this context and how, in each situation, he has to choose one or the other. Slaney would...