Mean Streets
Confessions of a Nighttime Taxi Driver
by Peter McSherry
- Short-listed, Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
Short-listed for the 2003 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
A world exists on the nighttime streets that the average person cannot envision. Taxi driver Peter McSherry recounts tales of his thirty years of experience driving cabs at night on the hard-bitten streets of Canada’s largest city. Drunks, punks, con artists, hookers, pimps, drug addicts, drug pushers, thugs, nymphomaniacs, snakes, politicians, celebrities . . . he’s experienced them all. McSherry serves up his stories with forthrightness, humour, and the occasional dash of cynicism. In this well-written and street-smart book, the author tells the rest of us about a world we can only imagine - if we dare.
Peter McSherry has worked as a high school teacher, a truck driver, a labourer, and a freelance writer, but mostly he's been a taxi driver - and that's how he wants to be known. His first book, The Big Red Fox, about notorious criminal Norman Ryan, was an amazingly detailed work of history.
close this panelWill entertain while showing the seeder, darker side of town and human nature.
the stories (McSherry) tells present an array of bizarre and wonderful and sad people and happenings. And he tells his stories well, with humour, sympathy, candour and, refreshingly, not a smidgen of political correctness.
A 30-year veteran of the streets, McSherry covers the territory with a savvy but largely sympathetic eye, introducing us to a rich and memorable cast of characters.
