Often controversial, sometimes sexual, and not without black humour, Love on the Killing Floor opens in Toronto in 1992 with Gilchrist, a down-and-out portrait photographer, being searched on a bus in the middle of the night by police he suspects are looking for a local rapist. His town is changing. Life wasn’t always like this. But now, with an estranged wife who’s convinced he’s a bum and a new girlfriend who refuses to be tamed, Gilchrist finds himself weaving in and out of bars and parties amidst an increasingly peculiar cast of characters including a troubled dominatrix, a hostile Rastafarian, and a recently separated father suffering from his own share of demons. Building on a shared foundation of racism and paranoia of immigration, radical feminism, gay activism and multiculturalism, they soon find themselves embroiled in the city’s first race riot. But when Gilchrist unexpectedly falls for a black woman with her own contentious notions about whites, he is exposed to a culture of which he was relatively ignorant, and completely misinformed, forcing him to reconsider a few hard-held beliefs. Ironically, when his old friendships start to break down, it is with “her people” he begins to associate, but not before a shocking reencounter with his ex shakes him awake once more.
It is with great sadness that we announce the unexpected passing of Trevor Clark on April 4, 2019. Trevor was not only a capable and courageous writer, but a fascinating person. As a writer, he was seemingly from another, more classical time, and didn't really fit into the strict definitions of what is supposed to define one today. That is one reason why we chose to publish so many of his books. His characters were always very real and very raw, and one didn't have to ponder very long the question of how much of himself Trevor injected into them. It was our pleasure (and, we felt, something of our duty), to present his writing to the world. With so much in letters being driven by political correctness these days and the need at whatever cost to not offend, his writing stood out boldly, as much the hammer as the nail. We loved him for that; he was unabashedly exactly who he presented himself as, and that will always have value in this world, no matter the direction the political or cultural winds are blowing at the time.
Among other things, Trevor Clark worked as an oilrig roughneck, editor, portrait photographer, bookstore manager, and home entertainment coordinator for a TV movie production company in London, where he lived for a number of years. He was the author of numerous works of fiction including Damaged at Daybreak, Hair-Trigger, Dragging the River, Love on the Killing Floor and Escape and other Stories, and his photographs appeared in Designs of Darkness: Interviews With Detective Novelists, (Bowling Green University Popular Press,) and Interviews With Contemporary Novelists (Macmillan/ St. Martin’s Press,) both by Diana Cooper-Clark, as well as Ross Macdonald: A Biography, by Tom Nolan, (Scribner’s,) NOW, and the Globe And Mail. He last resided in Montreal.
Trevor's last work of fiction, Seven Floors Down, is now available in bookstores and online.
