There’s a nether world out there of biker gangs, multi-million-dollar drug deals and murder and mayhem that would put the Marquis de Sade to shame.

Lyndsay Smith has seen it all as a Vancouver attorney. She prosecuted the largest cocaine conspiracy in B.C. history. That her husband works as an undercover cop probably gives her additional insight into the criminal underworld.

All of this gives the plot of Proximate Causes a definite ring of authenticity. Smith’s terse, understated writing style adds to the effect. We aren’t told whether or not any of this story came out of her real files, but it isn’t hard to believe that it could all be happening. We do know that the gangs are well established in B.C.’s Lower Mainland, and that the police have become alarmed at the size and sophistication of their operations.

Undercover RCMP sergeant Jackson Cole, a cross between Dirty Harry and CTV’s Constable Benton Fraser, gets some information that could incriminate the city’s biggest biker gang. From there, we get to see the crooks and the cops operating in their parallel universes, each using their high-tech tools and their own particular brands of intimidation. It’s manipulation and pressure from the cops, brutality and terror from the crooks.

Readers should undertake the first 100 pages at one sitting so they’ll understand the cast of characters, who enter the story in a series of abrupt switches. Otherwise, it’s an orgy of murders (one shotgun-in-the-face execution is graphically portrayed), two, possibly three suicides, and a mega take-down of an ambitious scheme to manufacture cocaine on a deserted Langley farm. A romance is thrown in, but it barely rates as a subplot. This is a gory crime story, written with the confidence that comes with knowledge, and there’s little room for sentiment.