In 1986, when I was 15, I visited my cousins in Kansas City, Mo. One night, we went out with the one old enough to drive, and he sped through the streets recklessly, at one point topping a hill with such velocity that the car left the ground. Those precious few seconds of going airborne gave me an oddly euphoric feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I felt it again reading Duane Swierczynski’s THE BLONDE.
With a waste-not-want-not, get-right-to-it premise typical of recent Dean Koontz high-concept thrillers, it opens with soon-to-be-divorced Jack drowning his miseries at a Philly airport bar. Up walks Kelly, a comely blonde who utters the pickup line “I poisoned your drink.”
Kelly tells him that shortly, he’ll vomit like he’s never vomited before. And by morning, he’ll be dead. Yeah, whatever. But when she proves correct on the first count, Jack believes he’d better do all he can to acquire an antidote.
Tick-tock. Vroom.
This takes him on one of those one-crazy-night scenarios that involves a hotel room scuffle, a chase on the L trains and – this is new – a visit to an underground mutual-masturbation club. And what’s with Kowalski, the Homeland Security hitman in pursuit while carrying a guy’s severed head in a gym bag?
I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. In fact, I can’t even tell you the real plot point that makes THE BLONDE so damned white-hot, because it would ruin one of the book’s better revelations. Let’s just call it a shot of D.O.A. with a dose of SPEED and leave it at that.
As with its predecessor and once-removed cousin THE WHEELMAN, Swierczynski’s novel is darkly comic and moves at incredible speed, helped along by a real-time structure, an outlandishly imaginative foundation, multiplex-ready action and a real nut-kicker of an ending.
After you’ve mopped the sweat off your brow at the end, St. Martin’s trade-paperback edition gives you about one page to catch your breath before taking off running again with “Redhead,” a short-story sequel. It’s a bit of a buzzkill, for reasons I can’t divulge – as Swierczynski warns, the first line contains spoilers – but which will be immediately apparent.
But hey, it’s THE BLONDE that’s the main event, and you’ll be on the very edge of your ringside seat. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE WHEELMAN by Duane Swierczynski
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