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.
Even we, as readers, will be caught by the timbre and skill of Moore’s storytelling and her careful sculpting of characters.
...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.
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.
[Lisa Moore’s] written a new kind of legend for a new Newfoundland.
…in Caught Moore has clearly set out to challenge the conventions of crime writing.
...Moore’s Caught is a fantastic read. It’s a rapid ride, with a strong current of tension that never lets up.
…Caught proceeds like a lit fuse.
The reader can only marvel at the precision of Moore's observations.
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.
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.
…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.
Caught is an outstanding novel, combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller.
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.
As trippy, mellow, and revelatory as Hearn’s weed, Caught takes pleasure from rewriting crime formulas and gives pleasure in doing so.
…precise, compressed, intimately rhythmic, mesmerizingly smart.
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.
Lisa Moore’s new book is a beautiful piece of writing…
Moore’s prose is as vivid as ever...
[T]his novel that is rife with realness, and beauty, and tension; so much it hurts, in the best possible way.