River City is an overly ambitious novel by John Farrow, the detective-writer alias of much-lionized Quebec author Trevor Ferguson (The Timekeeper, The Kinkajou, High Water Chants). Despite appearing under Farrow’s name, River City is much, much more than a detective novel. It is also a fictionalized, irreverent, politically incorrect account of Quebec from the days of 16th-century explorer Jacques Cartier all the way up to the 1970 October Crisis.

In veritable Technicolor, Farrow recounts the gruesome details of Jesuit priests tortured by natives and self-flagellating nuns who became heroines in the province. This is Quebec in all its gory splendour, with one major exception: the British conquest of New France. How on earth could any comprehensive Quebec history – even a fictionalized version – fail to recount at least some of the details of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham?

River City opens with the 1955 Montreal riot that erupted when Canadiens’ forward Maurice “Rocket” Richard was suspended for on-ice violence. That same night, a small-time hood and police informer, Roger Clement, is murdered in a downtown park facing the Sun Life building, long a symbol of Anglo power in Quebec. Clement has been stabbed with a very special knife: the Cartier Dagger. Farrow imagines this fictional talisman as Quebec’s Holy Grail, delivering power to a series of Québécois from 17th-century explorer Pierre Radisson all the way down to Pierre Trudeau.

Who killed Clement? What happened to the dagger after the murder? And how exactly is Trudeau involved? The answers to these questions aren’t revealed for almost 800 pages. By the time they do appear, it is doubtful many readers will still care how this convoluted, tedious fantasy ends, because the book, which starts off merrily enough, quickly evolves into a tirade against 20th-century political and religious leaders in Quebec, almost all of whom, we are told, also flirted with fascism.

The biggest problem with River City is that it does not know what it wants to be. Parts of it are spirited buffoonery. Parts are slightly fictionalized history lessons that manage to be entertaining and insightful. And parts, like the chapters on the October Crisis, are just absurd propagandizing.

The novel’s creepiest character is Camille Laurin, the true-life arch-villain to all those Anglo-Quebeckers who relocated to Toronto in the late 1970s. Laurin was the architect of Bill 101, the French-only language law passed by the Parti Québécois shortly after coming to power in 1976. We meet Laurin before he embarks on his political career, when he was just another chain-smoking, separatist, fascist psychiatrist and accessory to criminal activities. In Farrow’s novel, he does everything but barbeque Anglo babies and set fire to synagogues.

Anglo-Quebeckers who lived through the 1970s may appreciate the in-jokes vilifying Laurin, the PQ-hating Sun Life, and other recognizable names from the era. Those not familiar with Anglo-angst from that period, however, will be left scratching their heads.