BOOK REVIEW: Drive by James Sallis ★★★★☆

June 29, 2017

BOOK REVIEW: Drive by James Sallis ★★★★☆

Set mostly in Arizona and L.A., Drive is about a man who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. Sallis combines murder, treachery and payback in a sinister plot with resonances of 1940s pulp fiction and film noir. Told through a cinematic narrative that weaves back and forth through time and place, the story explores Driver's near-existential moral foundations, intercut with moments of bloody violence.

The whole city was a compass. How could anyone ever have gotten so hopelessly lost here?

I watched the 2011 adaption starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan a while back and while it was a great one-off movie, I just had to read the book. In just under 200 pages, and set mostly in L.A and Arizona, Drive is a story about a nameless man (referred to as Driver) who is a stunt driver for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. In an excellent contemporary noir, Diver is double-crossed and nearly left for dead. Although he hasn’t participated in violence, he’s caught up by circumstances largely beyond his control and somehow must survive.

Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there'd be no doubt.

The story begins with the aftermath of a shoot-out. Driver is wounded, when a robbery goes wrong and he has to deal with a crime boss who double-crossed him. This made me stop and think about how much we are tied to our fates; whether we can ever escape our backgrounds.

But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn's late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room.

This is a full-throttle getaway to the underworld. Acclaimed poet, critic, and novelist James Sallis’s writing style is simple, short and snappy. He’s one of a few novelists whose work is not covered in every minute detail. To me, Sallis’s Drive doesn’t paint a grim picture; he sketches it and lets the reader fill in the blanks. I can see why his writing style is perfect for making a film.

Life sends us messages all the time - then sits around laughing over how we're not gonna be able to figure them out.

For one, the action sequence is direct. Drive depicts some violence without it being all graphic galore. In many violent novels, there’s ghoulish lingering on the pain or the gore but Drive hits you on the spot and has no thought on the aftermath of each killing

Driver had the keys bunched in his hand, one braced and protruding between second and third fingers. Stepping directly forward, he punched his fist at alpha dog's windpipe, feeling the key tear through layers of flesh, looking down as he lay gasping for air.

The writing style is smart, humorous in places and taut, not verbose which is my kind of book. Sallis writes in Hemingway like sentences, making them sound like he means them in both content and feeling.

Driver is a simple man with some basic rules for anyone wishing to employ his services:

I drive. That’s all I do. I don’t sit in while you’re planning the score or while you’re running it down. You tell me where we start, where we’re headed, where we’ll be going afterwards, what time of day. I don't take part, I don’t know anyone, I don’t carry weapons. I drive.

Sallis has created a believable character Driver, whose name is unknown, is guarded man, weary of striking up friendships and establishing emotional connections, because anyone close to him end up dead and it’s not because he may have to skip town in a hurry. He’s like a shadow, a man who blends into the crowd, the kind that if you spend a day with, you’d probably wouldn’t remember a single detail about his life. And it has to be. The nature of his night job prevents him to get close to anyone. But that’s not to say he’s antisocial; Driver’s a fairly approachable guy for a man of few words. Apart from his driving, Driver leads a minimalist existence, moving frequently, paying cash, leaving virtually no trail. He’s not in it for the finical rewards (although it helps to pay the bills) but for the thrill, principally in the driving itself.

First thing you do, room, bar, restaurant, town or crib, is check and memorize the ways out.

Others characters include: Irina, a single Mexican mum who works three jobs, her son Bennicio, his dad Standard, a retired stunt driver Shannon, Driver’s screenwriter friend Manny, a disgraced alcoholic Doc former physician who patches up criminals for beer money, accomplice Blanche mobsters Bernie Rose and Nino (the later own’s a pizza place). These minor characters are believable for this novella.

We're professionals. People make deals, they need to stick to them. That's the way it works, if it's going to work at all.

For an action-packed book, it is a slow read. Driver spends most of his time in a solitary existence, moving from place to place. The novel leaps back and forth between present and past, from character and places. The choppy prose and non-linear style take a little getting used to as it provides some back-story to events in the present. It's easy to see how and why Drive was made into an action movie. Driver is like a western classic outlaw updated for modern Hollywood. In Sallis’s own words Driver represents freedom, Driver’s a cowboy and the cars are horses.

He existed a step or two to one side of the common world, largely out of sight, a shadow, all but invisible. Whatever he owned, either he could hoist it on his back and lug it along or he could walk away from it. Anonymity was the thing he loved most about the city, being a part of it and apart from it at the same time.

I personally liked the book and the movie adaption. But please, enjoy the novel on its own merits. Sallis writes solid crime fiction that’s fast, punchy and easy flowing dialogue. A great little neo-noir crime drama. Drive shows a terrifying world where right and wrong are blurred and the protagonist’s passion for driving in and out of the story, feeling alienation and displacement of a man in a sublime read.

Maybe he should turn around. Go back and tell them that’s what life was, a long series of things that didn’t go down the way you thought they would. Hell with it. Either they’d figure it out or they wouldn’t. Most people never did.

The novella is a brilliant throwback to the 1950’s hardboiled revenge novels, where Sallis takes a well-worn plot or character device and gives it a new spin, like the modern-day cowboy embroiled in a car heist. If you’re a fan of action, cars and Walter Hill’s 1978 film, The Driver, then Sallis’s Drive is the book for you, especially for those you’ve been reading a lot to long-winded novels and need something snappy. It won’t be for everyone, but for those wishing to read a crime novel with violence and no gore, look no further.

The sequel Driven promises the same standard of revenge, which I am looking forward to reading. He also has two detective series; Lew Griffin and Turner series, that I’ll be checking out.

Driver is what driver will do: