At the height of the Cold War a cynical American dodging the syndicate in Montréal is caught between the KGB, the Front de libération du Québec, RCMP Special Branch and a ruthless assassin behind a lethal conspiracy to destabilise Canadian national security.
EMBOUCHURE is the first installment of the electrifying SERVICES RENDERED political-crime thriller series created by Archibald Fitz.
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Created by
Archibald Fitz
It's the Swinging Sixties, and Canada is discretely gripped by the hidden ferocity of the Cold War. In the shadows one man straddles a thin line between loyalty and deceit while risking permanent damage to his integrity.
Known to all in Montréal as L'Américain, he's an urbane, unassuming portratist and enigmatic pulp writer sharing his spacious loft with a beautiful Sicilian muse and their mischievous orange tabby in the vibrant, Francophone bohemia of De Lorimier. However, beneath the surface of this untroubled bohemian existence dwells an unconventional and hazardous double-life.
The truth of the matter? Our protoganist earns hard cash navigating a surreptitious world of perilous, extralegal negotiations between professional criminals, perfidious blackmailers, trigger-happy kidnappers and the square, hapless victims they exploit as a professional Operative-for-Hire in confidential service to his adoptive city's affluent elites, maestro thieves, sceptical insurance firms, compromised politicians and a wide assortment of comically shrewd crooks willing to accept his fees and strict working conditions.
What's more? L'Américain is deemed so reliable he's been pressured into moonlighting as an anonymous, off-the-books black-bag courier and irregular investigator for the RCMP Security Service (Section D) as their needs must. A job he does not want. Yet does very, very well.
It's the Swinging Sixties and Canada is discretely gripped by the hidden ferocity of the Cold War. In its shadows, one man straddles a thin line between loyalty and deceit while risking permanent damage to his integrity.
Known to all in Montréal as L'Américain, he's an urbane, unassuming portratist and enigmatic pulp writer sharing his spacious loft with a beautiful Sicilian muse and their mischievous orange tabby in the vibrant, Francophone bohemia of De Lorimier. However, beneath the surface of this untroubled bohemian existence dwells an unconventional and hazardous double-life.
The truth of the matter? Our protoganist earns hard cash navigating a surreptitious world of perilous, extralegal negotiations between professional criminals, perfidious blackmailers, trigger-happy kidnappers and the square, hapless victims they exploit as a professional Operative-for-Hire in confidential service to his adoptive city's affluent elites, maestro thieves, sceptical insurance firms, compromised politicians and a wide assortment of comically shrewd crooks willing to accept his fees and strict working conditions.
What's more? L'Américain is deemed so reliable he's being pressured into moonlighting as an anonymous, off-the-books courier and irregular asset for the RCMP Security Service (Section D) as their needs must. A gig he does not want—but glad to have an additional source of income—transitions somewhat ungracefully from a retiring, dope-smoking nonconformist with a dodgy sideline into a peculiarly skilful and dependable asset for Canada's intelligence services.
It's the Swinging Sixties, and Canada is discretely gripped by the hidden ferocity of the Cold War. In its shadows, one man straddles a thin line between loyalty and deceit while risking permanent damage to his integrity.
Known to all in Montréal as L'Américain, he's an urbane, unassuming portratist and pulp writer sharing his spacious loft with a beautiful Sicilian muse and their mischievous orange tabby in the vibrant, Francophone bohemia of De Lorimier. However, beneath the surface of this untroubled bohemian existence dwells an unconventional and hazardous double-life.
The truth of the matter? Our protoganist earns hard cash navigating a surreptitious world of perilous, extralegal negotiations between professional criminals, perfidious blackmailers, trigger-happy kidnappers and the square, hapless victims they exploit as a professional Operative-for-Hire in confidential service to his adoptive city's affluent elites, maestro thieves, sceptical insurance firms, compromised politicians and a wide assortment of comically shrewd crooks willing to accept his fees and strict working conditions.
What's more? L'Américain is deemed so reliable he's being pressured into moonlighting as an anonymous, off-the-books courier and irregular asset for the RCMP Security Service (Section D) as their needs must. A gig he does not want—but glad to have an additional source of income—transitions somewhat ungracefully from a retiring, dope-smoking nonconformist with a dodgy sideline into a peculiarly skilful and dependable asset for Canada's intelligence services.
'I write Plays, Prose and Political Thrillers...'
H. Archibald Fitz is a dramatist, short-story writer, episodic poet, and a former investigative journo with the underground press. These days he is best known for a series of hardboiled, first-person espionage and crime-fiction short-stories and novellas featuring an anonymous American expat moonlighting as a freelance 'operative-for-hire' within the murky, bohemian arrondissements of urban Montréal during the height of the Cold War.
As a playwright, (writing as Thom West) Fitz draws heavily from his experiences as a contributing-actor with NYC-LES (Lower East Side) improvisational and absurdist political theatre groups to present highly satirical, emotive and existential dramas exploring the vast range of complexities found within the human identity, the depths of inter-personal relationships and the multifarious, ideological struggle waged between self-realisation and the role(s) enforced by social, tribal and religious insistence.
Originally a product of East Brooklyn's Sec. 8 HUD, the public education system and rotated-out of the civil service, Fitz now chooses of his own free will to live-in-sin with his longtime moll in a modest home owned by two tuxedo cats just outside British Columbia.
SHORT STORIES
SERVICES RENDERED
SCRIPTS
POEMS/PROSE
Fitz has captured the verve of 1960’s Cold War cinema without falling into comedic parody or James Bond escapades. With the voice of “The American” in your head, you will travel with him as this New Yorker hustles through the winter of his discontent in Quebec.
