James Sallis's Drive

Finished Drive by James Sallis last night. It was my first Sallis, but won't be the last, as I liked this quite a bit, even though there was some superficiality to it, especially in the end when one of the characters starts to speak about Borges and Cervantes. Okay, he's a screenwriter, but even that granted, it sounded a bit overimposed to me. I was also quite tired last night when I was reading the book and it came to as no surprise that I didn't understand everything. I'll read it again some of these days (or years).

But Sallis's style is great: very terse, very hardboiled, yet warm and affectionate at the same time. The plot could've been more original, as some people have complained, but I don't think so, since Sallis gives us only glimpses of the plot and switches back and forth in time quite freely (yet making almost all of it quite fluent). It's a case of style over story (not matter), and Sallis pulls it off with ease.

A negative Amazon reviewer says this:

"Something else also bothered me about this book. I felt like I had read this story before. I was right. There's a book called The Company She Keeps by Georgia Durante. It's a true life story published in 1998 of a woman who drove getaway cars for the Mob who later became a stunt driver. The Company She Keeps is also 456 pages of true life experiences including domestic abuse and celebrity fame. If you like reading about action, adventure and inspiration then The Company She Keeps by Georgia Durante is the book for you."

I know nothing about Durante's book, but I don't think it's forbidden to use true stories as a base for novels or other fiction.

(I read the Harcourt paperback reprint, the picture on top is the original edition from Poisoned Pen.)