The sensibility of Bruce MacDonald the rookie novelist bears a striking resemblance to that of his namesake, Bruce McDonald the veteran filmmaker. Both have a well-tuned ear for quirky vignettes of edgy, urban Canadian life – coffee in diners, too much red wine combined with too much marijuana, so-called crazy people who have more insight than their “normal” peers.

William Tobe is a young, white economics grad taking an introspective timeout from his family and the rest of his life by living in a rooming house in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood. He hooks up with Randall “Cobb” Seymour, a recently released ex-con of Ojibwa and Mohawk descent nabbed for income tax evasion, who has taken a room at the Gladstone Hotel.

Economically, Cobb and Will live – and thrive – off the grid. Like the 17th-century “runners of the woods” of the fur trade in New France who broke from the government monopoly, the two main characters in Coureurs de Bois make their living from black-market cigarettes. Cobb and Will have a keen eye for exchange, for the principles of economics – supply and demand, productivity, taxation – all of which they use effectively to channel cigarette money into Costa Rican rainforest land, on the bet that one day people will pay for the oxygen produced by the trees there. They later branch out into selling weed and S&M services.

Percolating nicely among the sex, smokes, coffee, and well-drawn secondary characters are explorations of how and why we spend time with those we do, along with questions of justice, the law, religion, spirituality, the ethics of shock therapy as a treatment for mental illness, and the nature of the social contract.

All of this comes in a fun fictional package, complete with a lot of pop philosophy, not to mention a voodoo-esque scene involving intercourse and a freshly slaughtered chicken.