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THE WHEELMAN is the weirdest crime novel I've read in quite a while. If you like the distracted, short scenes of Ken Bruen, the bizarre characters of Elmore Leonard, and can tolerate the body count of Lee Child, you'll devour Duane Swierczynski's book in an instant. It features mute Irish getaway driver Lennon. A bank robbery he's been roped into goes wrong, and before long he, a student in a band, a cop and various Italian and Russian gangsters are chasing round Philadelphia trying to track down the missing dosh. Never mind double-crossing . . . Multiply it by about six and you'll get some idea of the plot switchbacks. In THE WHEELMAN you never know who or what to believe. It's super-duper fast noir pulp (oh go on then, add caper to that list if you want to . . .) -- all that's missing are the ZAP, POW, THWACK Batman slogans, as the bodies pile up and people career round the city at top speed in search of the money. There are no conventional goodies here, and you'll spend the book trying to work out who's badder than the rest! And if you are firmly in the cozy camp, just don't bother to go there, as you'll hate the bloodshed and no doubt be driven demented by the narrative style. Me, I'm as far away from the cozy camp as it's possible to get! So I adored the cinematic very short scenes with weird headings, and the spare, deadpan writing style. The only snag with the latter is that there is a slight loss of tension towards the end, because the pacing doesn't vary and this is a linear story with no subplot -- Swierczynski starts with A and gets to Z without a detour. Swierczynski, a journalist by profession, makes neat use of newspaper cuttings at the end to help tie up this frenetic story. And there's a crafty little sting in the tail which made me smile. I liked this. Lots. And it'd make a cracking film. Stephen Rea's probably a bit old to play Lennon, but he could do deadpan for Ireland. And Dennis Hopper would have to be Saugherty the cop. It'd be a blast.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, December 2005
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