Rum running between Montreal and Windsor in the 40s.


A novel about Montreal during the not-so-halcyon era of a couple of decades ago when gangs and girls made rum-running and slot machines big business.
–from the 1950 edition

Ronald J. Cooke’s second novel, The Mayor of Côte St. Paul is the tale of a struggling writer living in Depression-era Montreal. Winnipegger Dave Manley arrived in the city thinking that its rich atmosphere will inspire his fiction, but was met by a stream rejection slips. His luck turns, for good and bad, when he meets Cherie, a looker from Lunenberg who does dirty work for a crime boss known as The Mayor. It isn’t long before Dave is running booze between Montreal and Windsor, learning all there is to know about the slot machine and liquor rackets.

Dave wants out, Cherie wants out—but there is no easy escape from The Mayor, a man who lives in luxury derived from vice and murder, surrounded by the squalor of Côte St. Paul.

Published in 1950, The Mayor of Côte St. Paul enjoyed the month of June on newsstands, never to be seen again. This Ricochet Books edition is the first in sixty-four years.

Read an excerpt