Stanley Park

Aspiring young chef Jeremy Papier will do almost anything to keep his high-end Vancouver restaurant afloat. Jeremy, who views cooking as gang warfare, is a self-styled "Blood" -- a believer in preparing innovative dishes from fresh, local ingredients. He has only contempt for the "Crips" who bend to every passing food fad.
But when his latest financial scam fails, Jeremy is forced to strike a deal with the devil in the form of a powerful coffee-shop magnate who transforms his beloved bistro into a pretentious "Crip" palace. Mix in Jeremy's eccentric professor father, a group of homeless men with a taste for stewed raccoon, and the decades-old mystery of two children murdered in Stanley Park, and you have a tantalizing concoction of satire and suspense.

Winner of the Journey Prize for his short fiction, Timothy Taylor grew up in Vancouver and Edmonton and worked for several years as a banker in Toronto before becoming a full-time writer. Stanley Park was finalist for the 2001 Giller Prize.