Kaspoit! puts speculative illustration to the most profuse series of crimes ever to take place on Canadian soil. Set in the lower mainland of Vancouver, the time is now-criminals are brazen, cops are cynical-and no one is trying to solve the disappearance of dozens of women. Throughout, the novel conveys a savage, dystopian depiction of a netherworld teeming with gangland crime, sexual exploitation, betrayal and murder. The language is neologistic-jarring and vulgar-creating an atmosphere dense with bloodchilling dread, hurtling the reader through sinister, malevolent scenes with a velocity rarely seen in contemporary fiction. Praise for Kaspoit!: "... After William Pickton was arrested, media and activist groups had a field day speculating about why women were going missing from the Downtown Eastside for years before the Vancouver Police or RCMP appeared to notice. That's the question Bolen tries to answer in Kaspoit! It's a novel about perception and agendas, about how what we see, and what we think we know, are determined by what we're looking for. ... Bolen's stripped-to-the-frame, dialogue-driven story will be as shocking to CanLit-conditioned sensibilities as a slap in the face with a bag of cold nails." (John Moore, BC BookWorld) "Kaspoit! is either a sublime literary work of near genius or is one of the most wretched wallows in the dark mire of the soul ever published. ... Reader beware, Kaspoit! is not for the easily upset, but, if you can handle it, you'll soon realize you're reading a work of stark brilliance. ... The story itself is so compelling that the reader returns to the book, though repelled by it. Finally, the conspiracy it posits is startling compared to the vague news coverage that the infamous pig farm case received." (Les Wiseman, The Ottawa Citizen) "a tour de force of thug-life horror, the book is a fictionalized account of what might have gone on at a certain Port Coquitlam pig farm where the DNA of 32 women was found during a massive forensic investigation. If you've ever felt that the publication ban on Robert Pickton's speedy trial and conviction smelled strongly of cover-up, this is for you." (Alex Varty, The Georgia Straight)

Toy Gun continues the exploration of character and fate on the streets of Vancouver that began with the novel Stupid Crimes (1992) and continued in Krekshuns (1995). Written in the style of the "hard-boiled" detective thriller, Toy Gun is very much a literary treatment of contemporary life in one of the world's most densely populated urban centres. The novel focusses more closely on the stormy life of the protagonist, parole officer Barry Delta-his loves and losses, his misfortunes, foolishness and struggle; all push Delta in directions he seems never able to predict or comprehend. Toy Gun also follows several of Delta's more "challenging" cases, offering rare insight into the mental machinery of the criminal recidivist, while exploring with bleak humour the moral pressures of being another man's keeper. Praise: "Dennis Bolen has managed to make the unsavoury engrossing in his imaginative novel." (Globe and Mail) "If there is such a thing as a sensitive Bukowski, then Bolen is it...enough convincing debauchery to both shock and compel readers." (Vancouver Sun) "Toy Gun suggests that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,' that what is wrong with individuals is also wrong with the system and thus, with society as a whole. ... The mock-epic conventions suggest that Barry Delta is the modern urban hero, wounded, wounding, plodding, passive-aggressive, alone in a hostile city, doing battle over the telephone, in offices, on buses, in the street, suffering defeats, retreating from bed after bed. He has a key to the city, but he cannot find a gate. Like the parolee's toy gun, it may get him what he wants, but for sure it will get him killed. So, even if the protagonist is not particularly likeable, even if his redemption is so tentative as to feel suspect, the book has much to offer-the story, the style, the Vancouver setting, the jaundiced critique of a starved and almost-abandoned correctional system, and of the larger society wants to do right but is constrained by fear and the bottom line. The plot perfectly informs the theme of good intentions with ineffective insufficient follow-through. How very Canadian. How self-revelatory. Bolen forces us to face things about ourselves that we would really rather not admit." (J.M. Bridgeman, Prairie Fire )