The Wheelman

Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Staff Picks , Fiction

"Caper novel" doesn’t seem like quite the right phrase to describe Duane Swierczynski’s debut crime novel, The Wheelman, since the body count is almost as high as the page count. But you’ll find yourself snickering anyway, and you’ll recognize the homage when the hero borrows a Donald Westlake pseudonym as an alias mid-novel.

Patrick Selway Lennon is the getaway car driver for a well-planned bank job in Philadelphia. The take is $650,000, and despite a few glitches, he gets them on the road out of town. But then the car is rammed by the Russian mob, and Lennon wakes up to find himself being dumped in a pipe on the construction site of the new children’s museum, along with a couple of other bodies.

Things only get worse from there.

With the Russians, the old Italian mob, various cops and ex-cops, and various partners and ex-partners all on his trail, Lennon tries repeatedly to recover the money and get out of Dodge to reunite with his beloved Katie.

Author Swierczynski corners as fast as his wheel man protagonist, and the hairpin turns in his plot are enough to induce whiplash, but it’s a great ride. Fans of the genre will laugh out loud at some of the unexpected twists Swierczynski puts on familiar conventions. Not for the squeamish, but a lot of fun.