Thursday, January 8, 2015

THE WHEELMAN by Duane Swierczynski


GRADE: B+

When it comes to big loads of money, trust nobody!
I probably wouldn't last very long as a career criminal. I probably would be on the edge the whole time and might blow everyone away because I wouldn't be able to trust that any of my partners would be loyal. If I tried to pull a heist, the outcome might look a bit like this fun novel about a mute getaway driver during the most disastrous heist of his career. Lennon and his partners make their getaway from a $650K bank heist, but immediately all hell breaks loose!

The action almost never lets up throughout the entire novel, constantly growing into a complex web of colorful characters, twists and turns, and enough double- and triple-crosses to fill three Dashiell Hammett books and a season of 24. This is a fast-paced read and definitely one of the most entertaining novels I've read in a while! I love how each character introduced had more to him or her than met the eye at first, and they brought something new to the plot and pushed it along in a unique way. My favorite character was probably Saugherty, the corrupt ex-cop who made his way through the entire story drunk as a skunk, but surprisingly very functional. 

Action-packed, and at times downright hilarious, I would recommend this to any fan of crime thrillers. If Elmore Leonard got a little buzzed and tried to churn out a Richard Stark novel, this book might've been the product!
"This bastard, Lennon decided, was going to die the slowest of slow deaths. The kind where you start out with a cheese grater and a blowtorch, and things escalate from there."

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