DARK RIDE follows Hardy “Hardly” Reed, a perennial stoner living an easy life in California. That all changes when Reed spots two children who both show signs of parental abuse. Feeling the urge to intervene, Reed quickly finds out that Children’s Aid is overwhelmed and stuck in bureaucratic muck. So it’s up to Hardy to investigate and potentially save the lives of these two kids; a task he is woefully unprepared for.

DARK RIDE is a breezy read that had me laughing out loud through its brisk length. I can’t stress enough how funny this is, which I definitely was not expecting. If you like comedies like The Big Lebowski, The Nice Guys, and Snatch, I think you’ll have a great time with this one. It’s a classic underdog story with colourful characters and settings.

Hardy gets put through the wringer running up against roadblock after roadblock while being forced to take his lumps along the way. Against all odds, he carries on even though a positive outcome proves increasingly less likely as the story moves along. The novel is gifted with a wide cast of characters who both assist Hardy and also implore him to back off. It’s hard to root against him even if you know this probably won’t end well for anyone involved.

If anything, Lou’s novel spotlights the flaws in our system that all too often fail our most vulnerable. Not everyone is like Hardy however, in fact, the vast majority of us are the opposite. How can we expect to make a difference when the world is an inherently shitty place? Reed may make a difference in these children’s lives, but there are stacks and stacks of case files on the desks of social workers that just cannot be actioned due to funding, time or staff. It’s disheartening to learn, but Reed at least proves that there is one of us looking to stand up and fight.