#96 The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski
By Brian Prisco | Posted Under Book Reviews | Comments (6)
Duane don’t give a FUCK. It’s the best kind of high octane book to smash your face with. He takes the rage from living in Philly saddled with a last name that diabolical to spell and wedges it into a book that screams JASON STATHAM in your face without being a wannabe.
It’s a heist/mob book that careens through Center City Philly with reckless abandon, killing through characters like you would not believe. Anyone can die at any moment. It’s brilliant and breathtaking. Characters are more disposable than diapers. We sort of hinge ourselves on Lennon, a mute wheelman who’s a driver for hire for bank robbers. What seems like an easy job turns to shit quick, and the rest of the novel deals with Lennon trying to live through the day.
The Wheelman is gloriously spastic, smashing along in bite-sized hunks of fleshy violence, like the Dorsey novels I adore with a bit more directed plot. It’s ridiculously fun, like people accuse Crank of being, and it’s wonderful. It’s smashmouth ridiculous, and there are two more where that came from. I will always herald a hometown hero, and Duane’s got it. It’s fucking shitballs crazy, not necessarily well written so much as like a bump of straight asskicking.
Read this in your face, fucker.
This book is part of the Cannonball Read series. For more of Brian’s reviews (and he’s only got four more for the win), check out his blog, The Gospel According to Prisco.
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Comments
Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at June 24, 2009 9:21 AM
OK! OK! Don't hurt me, please! I got a wife and kid!