Los Angeles in the Dirty Thirties, and a dead-end kid from Toronto is trying to break free of the hobo jungle by driving a cab, when who should hop into the back seat with the words “Follow that limousine” but thriller writer Raymond Chandler.

It is a tribute to Paul Stuewe’s sense of style and language that he avoids, if only just, the cliché “Follow that cab.” In evoking the seamier side of the Depression era, there must be a great temptation to ape the pulp fiction of the time, but Stuewe has higher ambitions. In This Dark Embrace, he sets out to chronicle the formative days of Walter McDumont, a tough kid from the Cabbagetown slums pushed by Chandler’s words to become the cop-hero of writer Hugh Garner’s detective fiction.

Stuewe, Garner’s biographer, previously completed an unfinished McDumont novel called Don’t Deal Five Deuces, and he is clearly conversant with the tough-guy style of the period. But being a man of wide reading – a former bookseller, Quill & Quire reviewer, Books in Canada editor, and general literary critic – Stuewe aims to penetrate deeper and crack the hard-boiled shell of the Thirties. This Dark Embrace takes agreeably predictable turns, with its breezy chatter, loose women, crooked cops, and easy violence. But through the restless character of McDumont, a smart kid trying to slip the era’s shackles, the thin plot is stretched to encompass Stalinist agitation, race relations, jazz history, and creative-writing classes at the Depression’s settlement houses.

Stuewe’s competing interests make for a wildly uneven novel. His period references often seem didactic or self-conscious, and characters like McDumont and Chandler veer in and out of credibility as Stuewe concentrates on perfecting period vernacular or developing social and literary critiques. His pulp needs more fiction.