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4th out of 115 books
—
67 voters
The Wheelman
by
Duane Swierczynski (Goodreads Author)
Meet Lennon, a mute Irish getaway driver who has fallen in with the wrong heist team on the wrong day at the wrong bank. Betrayed, his money stolen and his battered carcass left for dead, Lennon is on a one-way mission to find out who is responsible--and to get back his loot. But the robbery has sent a violent ripple effect through the streets of Philadelphia. And now a di...more
Trade Paperback, 223 pages
Published
November 2006
by Minotaur Books
(first published 2005)
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Mute getaway driver Patrick Lennon thought it was a routine bank job until the black van rammed them and everything went to hell. Amidst a maze of murder and double crosses, can Lennon recover the $650,000?
Wow. I'd been aware of this book for a couple years before I finally picked it up and now I'm kicking myself for waiting so long.
The Wheelman has more twists and double crosses packed within its slim 250-ish pages than any four other crime books on the racks. More twists than a snake trapped o...more
Wow. I'd been aware of this book for a couple years before I finally picked it up and now I'm kicking myself for waiting so long.
The Wheelman has more twists and double crosses packed within its slim 250-ish pages than any four other crime books on the racks. More twists than a snake trapped o...more
Raving review blurbs give me pause. "...kept me up all night," "a writer to watch," "...look out so and so..." and other boilerplate comments writers give others rarely pan out for me. However, with The Wheelman, I did read it in one day and it DID keep me up until midnight finishing it. What a hoot. Take a dash of Gun Monkeys (Victor Gischler), add a dose of Pest Control (Bill Fitzhugh) and shake on ice with the body count in the movie, True Romance, and you've got one heck of an entertaining r...more
2 likes · like · see review
Lennon is an accomplished wheelman. Escaping by the skin of his teeth from a successful bank job, Lennon wants to avoid causing injury to any bystanders, but while leaving the bank in a hurry, a woman pushing a stroller walks in his path. Braking and wrestling with the wheel was out of the question. The risk of fishtailing was too great, and Lennon worried that he would broadside both the lady and the stroller. Steering clear out of the way was impossible. Immediately to the right of the woman a...more
Dear Mr Swierczynski:
I hate you for being such a good author. By hate, I mean envy, and by author I mean sheer awesome dude. So, to recap, I envy you for being a sheer awesome dude.
I read The Wheelman over a couple day span on the local transit system. It was less polished than your later novels such as Severance Package or The Blonde. It is weird to describe pulpy books as polished, but I am sure you are picking up what I am putting down.
I know it is your book and as such, you already know the...more
I hate you for being such a good author. By hate, I mean envy, and by author I mean sheer awesome dude. So, to recap, I envy you for being a sheer awesome dude.
I read The Wheelman over a couple day span on the local transit system. It was less polished than your later novels such as Severance Package or The Blonde. It is weird to describe pulpy books as polished, but I am sure you are picking up what I am putting down.
I know it is your book and as such, you already know the...more
This was a lightning quick read. I usually take a while to get through a book, but I finished this one in 2 1/2 days (hey, for me it's a record). From page one, the narrative propels you from a bank robbery gone wrong to a displaced, unlikely protagonist trying to piece together what went wrong, and never lets you up for air. The chapters are short - half a page to one page mostly, and the story is told pretty much in real time. My favorite part is the vignette surrounding shady ex-cop-turned pr...more
If I had some spare cash waiting for an investment opportunity I would have sought to buy the movie rights to The Wheelman within the first thirty pages of starting. The novel starts at a ferocious pace and never lets up, driven by snappy dialogue and taut action, with almost every scene containing a twist. In fact I can’t remember a story with so many twists and turns, with double, triple and more crosses, as every character seeks to get the better of the others in the hunt for the stolen money...more
Swierczynski has put together a fun, fast paced crime novel. The most effective "gimmick" is the fact that the main character, Lennon, is mute. While Lennon's thoughts are directly revealed to the reader from time to time, he also appears in scenes in which he is not the viewpoint character, and his lack of dialog in those scenes emphasizes the shift in POV to a greater extent than in many novels.
The breakneck pace may contribute to the novel's greatest weakness, however, which is its rather uns...more
The breakneck pace may contribute to the novel's greatest weakness, however, which is its rather uns...more
Patrick Selway Lennon is a wheelman. He doesn't rob banks – he drives the getaway car. And he's about to help pull a bank job in Philadelphia that will be the worst mistake of his career.
Lennon's perfect plan for stashing the money and laying low until the heat's off goes awry when someone tries to horn in on the action. This sets a string of events in motion that pit the Russian Mob against the local Mafia, inflames the greed of a crooked ex-cop and brings a woman named Katie, waiting for Lenno...more
Lennon's perfect plan for stashing the money and laying low until the heat's off goes awry when someone tries to horn in on the action. This sets a string of events in motion that pit the Russian Mob against the local Mafia, inflames the greed of a crooked ex-cop and brings a woman named Katie, waiting for Lenno...more
Finished 'The Wheelman' by Duane Swierczynski and what can I but that it is total crap. The author tries to mix the styles of Elmore Leonard and Donald E Westlake and just manages to churn out tripe. The characterization is two-dimensional to such an extent that I struggled to keep track of who is doing what. The protagonist suffers violence from the hands of almost every other character that passes by and everytime he gets up and just walks into the next scrape without much ado. He starts out a...more
I wish I could give this 3.5 stars. It was better than good but far from great. First, to the "the better than good" elements. The dialogue was crisp and the pace was fast. The dark story of double and triple crossing gangsters pulls you in quickly, almost violently. There were details of the city (Philadelphia), it's routes, it's evils and it's issues that only a true insider could know.
But, to get to the "far from great", it ultimately left me flat. While I admire the author's ability to kill...more
But, to get to the "far from great", it ultimately left me flat. While I admire the author's ability to kill...more
4.5 stars..
The title caught my attention and then when Duane Swierczynski's name kept popping-up in most the places I surf the internet (Mainly over at www.fantasyLiterature.com where I'm a reviewer and his book Expiration Date was reviewed), I snatched it up as soon as the copyrights allowed for the USA Amazon Kindle publication.
I thought it was going to be a story about fast cars and robbing banks, but it's not that exactly. It's about a really good getaway driver, who has a long string of bad...more
The title caught my attention and then when Duane Swierczynski's name kept popping-up in most the places I surf the internet (Mainly over at www.fantasyLiterature.com where I'm a reviewer and his book Expiration Date was reviewed), I snatched it up as soon as the copyrights allowed for the USA Amazon Kindle publication.
I thought it was going to be a story about fast cars and robbing banks, but it's not that exactly. It's about a really good getaway driver, who has a long string of bad...more
I can't remember how I first heard of this book but I was at Powell's one day and saw it used in the Mystery section and had some available cash and grabbed it off the shelf.
This is a pedal-to-the-floor crime story. Every short chapter ends with some kind of unexpected change in the evolving story and propelled me toward the end with verve and efficiency. The dialogue is functional and witty and I found myself particularly enjoying the character of Saughtery, even though like almost every charac...more
This is a pedal-to-the-floor crime story. Every short chapter ends with some kind of unexpected change in the evolving story and propelled me toward the end with verve and efficiency. The dialogue is functional and witty and I found myself particularly enjoying the character of Saughtery, even though like almost every charac...more
Wow. This is a great and fast paced book. Very convulted and bloody as hell.
Betrayal doesn't bode well with Lennon, the getaway driver. Lennon waking up while being stuffed down a pipe may be one of the worst things to happen to the Philadelphia mob scene. He has to fuck those who fucked him. What ensues is death, lots of it, with people killing each other with their own reasons for being pissed off, but always on top of their minds is the $650,000 from the heist.
The great thing about this book...more
Betrayal doesn't bode well with Lennon, the getaway driver. Lennon waking up while being stuffed down a pipe may be one of the worst things to happen to the Philadelphia mob scene. He has to fuck those who fucked him. What ensues is death, lots of it, with people killing each other with their own reasons for being pissed off, but always on top of their minds is the $650,000 from the heist.
The great thing about this book...more
The Wheelman is a post modern black comic take on the classic caper gone wrong. Alongside Allan Guthrie and Charlie Huston here is another writer of no holds barred, punk rock neo-pulp. Duane Swierczynski. comes off more knowing than Guthrie with a fiercely modern sensibility. This book is all pure bravado storytelling with twists, complications, betrayals, endless new characters, death at every turn (what was the body count?), and lots of surprises (try to guess who makes it, you might be wrong...more
This is about a heist gone bad---specifically a bank robbery. They get away clean (mostly thanks to Lennon, the wheelman, or the guy who drives the getaway car) but it all falls apart once they're on their way out of the city. Soon, Lennon is the only one left alive and while it's clear he was double-crossed, it's decidedly unclear as to who did it.
I love heist stories. Generally they make me want to do some Ocean's 11-style capers of my own. This one? Really not so much.
But besides curbing my...more
I love heist stories. Generally they make me want to do some Ocean's 11-style capers of my own. This one? Really not so much.
But besides curbing my...more
I'm still trying to comb my hair back down and brush the grit out of my teeth after jumping in the passenger side with "the wheelman" Lennon. The plot snaps along at a breakneck pace setting I'm sure the world record for the most double dealing, double crosses in the history of literature. The prose is muscular, the dialogue is crisp, the plot is intriguing and all of this unfolds in 231 pages. A very impressive debut novel, I will definitely be picking up more books by Duane Swierczynski which...more
I only occasionally get in the mood for pulp-thriller-crime novels, so I only really picked up this book because it's written by a former crime reporter from my hometown Philadelphia and the entire story is set throughout Philly. It was just cool being able to picture the happenings of the book in places I'm familiar with.
Anyway, it's a lightening fast read as all pulp-thrillers should be and is very funny and often times vulgar (as I would assume most thieves/bank robbers/murderers would be). T...more
Anyway, it's a lightening fast read as all pulp-thrillers should be and is very funny and often times vulgar (as I would assume most thieves/bank robbers/murderers would be). T...more
ok, firstly - i wish this was a series. loved our hero. that said, this was not a book that i totally got into right away. started a bit slow, felt a bit stilted. but once things start moving, they really start moving.
and there's none of that safety you assume there'll be - you simply don't know who's going to be horribly killed and thrown down a pipe next.
lots of twists and turns, lots of overlapping storylines bringing it all together. but you need to put in the time, otherwise you'll either s...more
and there's none of that safety you assume there'll be - you simply don't know who's going to be horribly killed and thrown down a pipe next.
lots of twists and turns, lots of overlapping storylines bringing it all together. but you need to put in the time, otherwise you'll either s...more
I'm fairly new to the crime genre and started with this as it was short and self-contained. The book was a lot of fun (if you like bad things happening to bad people) and the pace was lightning fast throughout. The main character is likeable despite being a nasty piece of work, although the fact everyone else tends to be even worse makes it easier to root for him. One element I'm still not totally sure I liked or not was the fact that all the characters are so interconnected. While it makes the...more
Disappointing compared to "Fun and Games". Not a lot here. Those from the City of Brotherly Love may enjoy the neighborhood knowledge from a former editor of the Philadelphia City Paper. Oddly I could see this working maybe as a movie; that's a front handed compliment for parallel kinetic story lines and a backhanded compliment for generally shyte writing.
I do enjoy that the gospel of paleo dieting is even infiltrating crime novels, "He noticed an interesting side effect to a steady diet of Jac...more
I do enjoy that the gospel of paleo dieting is even infiltrating crime novels, "He noticed an interesting side effect to a steady diet of Jac...more
Man, this took me a while to finish. It certainly had nothing to do with the plot, the characters or the author’s pacing; I just picked the wrong times to read. Almost every time I picked this book up, I dozed off. What had made this experience so frustrating was that I really liked it and I would find myself getting angry and wondering if I was suffering from narcolepsy. Trust me, if you’re unable to find a story about a mute, Irish getaway driver at least a little interesting, there may be som...more
7 likes · like · see review
"The NEW Year of Mystery" continues!... I got this book last weekend on the recommendation of the owner of Partners & Crime (www.crimepays.com), and as usual she did not steer me wrong - - LOVED LOVED LOVED this book! Story opens with a mute getaway driver of a Philadelphia bank heist gone wrong, and immediately spirals into a white-knuckle thrill ride that doesn't let up for a second. Dark, violent, and at the same time comic, with a completely original and engaging cast of characters, and...more
I'm not really sure WTF I just read. Duane Swierczynski has a very odd yet unique writing stye. But unfortunately he's one of those types that tries to be so different that portions of his story do not make sense. And so many characters and so many different variations of how they're referred and so many different chapters with different views from different people... haha yeah, my clusterfuck sentence there is how I felt this whole book. BUT... a very good storyline that had me intrigued throug...more
This fast-paced debut novel opens outside of a bank in Philadelphia where Lennon, an apparently mute Irishman, is waiting patiently for the rest of his team. Lennon is not a bank robber exactly, but for a share of the take, he drives bank robbers to and from the job.
This particular job has been carefully planned and Lennon knows his exit route down to the last inch. But at the last possible second, the heist goes sour and the proverbial excrement hits the fan. Lennon finds himself betrayed, lef...more
This particular job has been carefully planned and Lennon knows his exit route down to the last inch. But at the last possible second, the heist goes sour and the proverbial excrement hits the fan. Lennon finds himself betrayed, lef...more
8 likes · like · see review
The Wheelman is Stark (any Parker caper) meets Vachss (‘The Getaway Man’) in a fusion by which all heist novels should be measured henceforth. The protagonist, mute getaway drive Patrick Lennon is instantly likable showing compassion, loyalty and willingness to participate in violence only as a last resort. For a guy who claims to be nonviolent, a hell of a lot of people are caused a great deal of grief at the hands (or instruments wielded by said hands) of Lennon – all justified of course. The...more
[re-posted from my old blog]
The Wheelman was yet another wild ride with Duane Swierczynski, author of The Blonde. Wheelman was his first book, and actually kind of a series with The Blonde, as a major character in the latter book makes a surprise appearance in Wheelman. A short book, one I read in about 3 days, it was nonetheless a great read and highly recommended.
Patrick Lennon is an experienced and much sought after wheelman, or the guy who drives the getaway car. His latest job is with Bling...more
The Wheelman was yet another wild ride with Duane Swierczynski, author of The Blonde. Wheelman was his first book, and actually kind of a series with The Blonde, as a major character in the latter book makes a surprise appearance in Wheelman. A short book, one I read in about 3 days, it was nonetheless a great read and highly recommended.
Patrick Lennon is an experienced and much sought after wheelman, or the guy who drives the getaway car. His latest job is with Bling...more
You can always count on Swierczynski to deliver a good adrenaline rush. This frenetically paced thriller follows the exploits of Lennon, a professional getaway driver. After the three-man team successfully robs 650 grand from a bank in Philly, they place the money in a car safely stowed away in a long-term parking garage. That’s when everything goes wrong.
The Wheelman isn’t a comic caper like Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series. Instead, Swiercynski writes biting prose. It’s sharp, it’s got an e...more
The Wheelman isn’t a comic caper like Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series. Instead, Swiercynski writes biting prose. It’s sharp, it’s got an e...more
I had the privilege of reading Duane Swierczynski's THIS HERE'S A STICK-UP, his non-fiction tome of bank robbery facts and figures, a few years back when it first came out. In THE WHEELMAN, Mr. Swierczynski takes fact, mixes it up with a whole lot of fiction, and comes up with a thrilling crime debut that's well worth the read!
We first meet Lennon, a wheelman or get-away driver, waiting outside a Wachovia bank in Philadelphia as his two associates, Bling and Holden, get caught on their way out...more
We first meet Lennon, a wheelman or get-away driver, waiting outside a Wachovia bank in Philadelphia as his two associates, Bling and Holden, get caught on their way out...more
Lennon isn't a bank robber, he's the getaway car driver. So when the robbery goes pear-shaped and his crew is double crossed, he finds his battered and near-dead body being shoved into a drain pipe for disposal. Fighting his way out, Lennon has to find out who crossed him... the Russian mob? The Italians? Was it the crooked cop, or even his own mentor? This is a wild and ultra-violent pulp noir where the bullets and bodies fly fast and furious and the loot is on the line. Swierczynski keeps the...more
I have already read Hell and Gone (4 stars) and Fun and Games (3 stars) by this author. This is an earlier book of his and the "hero" is mute getaway driver. I could tell, reading this, that Swierczynski's later novels were based on a similar type of writing, action and violence that is found in this book. I think his storylines and pacing have improved with time. Although there were parts of The Wheel Man that show his future promise, the book as a whole didn't do it for me.
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Duane Swierczynski is an American crime writer who has written a number of non-fiction books, novels and also writes for comic books.
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I know the second one is already out of prin...more
Apr 18, 2011 07:41pm
Apr 19, 2011 01:27am