Pros: Break-neck action, with violence at every turn and surprise mixed with suspense.
Cons: You care little for the criminals characters except as scaffolds for deception and pain.
The Bottom Line: Highly recommend IF you are a fan of the sadistic/comic vogue where the challenge is to endure unspeakable cruelty served up with panache, odd twists and deviltry.
wickengel's Full Review: Duane Swierczynski - The Wheelman
Think Kill Bill (I and II) meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail--where the Grail is a trunk full of cash.
This hard-edged novel of multiple double crosses, slow torture, botched and perfected killings, miraculous "up pipe" as well as monotonous "down pipe" experiences ends in a news clipping about a certain stench emanating from a newly set patch of thick cement foundation poured for New Jersey's children's museum in Camden, NJ. Jeffrey Greenblatt, the project's developer, reportedly proclaimed, "This will breathe new life into the dead urban center that is Camden." So much for Monty Python--but wait.
Lennon, the "wheelman" in the title is, mostly anyway, only a driver and a mute. His quest for revenge (which he obtains) and money (which he does not obtain) after his pick up gang has been sidelined, dumped down a pipe and systematically hunted down, is the story of unbelievable pain, near-death experiences and comebacks as his partners and members of first the Russian and then the Italian mobs get into the act.
Lennon kills without compunction, and others try to kill him in cold blood as for sport. We do get satisfaction from his killing a son and father involved in the Russian mob, but Lennon's trail of victim's bodies extends well beyond the infamous pipe, alluded to above, and its environs to all over the city of Philadelphia. So much for the Kill Bill theme, but wait further.
Mind you,the heist was well planned, and Lennon's getaway was perfect in both plan and execution--up to a point that he could not have anticipated. Lennon has a hard time figuring out how his "perfect" getaway plan could have been anticipated. Little did he know until later that his mentor and his girlfriend (the last people he would suspect) knew all about how he would think the operation through. Cross and double cross, the name of the game.
And the money? A trunk load of cold cash--the loot from the heist--remains in the background until the very end. The winner of that prize is a surprise worth waiting for.
The author is successful in engaging us with his unlikely hero. His hard focus on Lennon unifies the work. The work is arranged in easily read chunks with scattered introductory epigrams from the words of the most famous robbers in American history. During one torture scene, Lennon is addressed by his tormentor sardonically as "Dillinger." But many of the famous outlaws are represented, from "Baby Face" Nelson to Craig Pritchert and Nova Guthrie, with a quotation from the song "Bonnie and Clyde."
Irony is part of the author's intent with the historical allusions, but the cumulative savagery of the story, in Lennon's terms, starts with the cheese grater and the blowtorch and escalates from there. The savagery of the Russian mob contrasts starkly with the impotency of the Italian mob. And the police? Don't make me laugh. The author is editor in chief of the Philadelphia City Paper.
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