Our Book Review of RIC-A-DAM-DOO

Wayne Kerr’s novel, Ric-A-Dam-Doo: The Snow Devils Kindle Edition opens with a five-man crew of soldiers arriving in a foreign port. They are from Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry’s 2nd Battalion arriving for a covert operation. They are met with skepticism and derision by an officer expecting Navy Seals. She doesn’t know about the soldiers from the Great White North.

The title of this book may also be met with confusion. If you don’t know (I certainly didn’t), Ric-a-dam-doo is the nickname for the original camp flag of the PPCLI – a phonetic bastardization of the Gaelic saying: cloth of thy mother. The soldiers of the PPCLI would rather lose an arm than see their battalion badge (sewn to their uniform) damaged. A hearty bunch no doubt.

Kerr’s writing is very strong, his story-telling skills fine. He draws the reader quickly into battle, filling the pages with secret operations and then leads the main characters to a heart breaking incident years later.

This isn’t a war novel in the classic sense, it’s a crime thriller in which a retired PPCLI soldier and his retired Interpol agent wife are swept into fighting a Mexican gang of slave traders. Characters have weight, operations make sense, and the whole story is scary, thrilling and plausible.

At 290 pages, you can easily get lost in this novel, published in April of 2016 by Canusa. Right now it’s $2.99 on Kindle or free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.

Four Stars