The Blonde

by Duane Louis and Duane Swierczynski

Book Overview

Boy meets girl. Girl kidnaps boy. Boy loses girl, and is pursued by a professional killer carrying a decapitated head in a gym bag. The Blonde is a modern (crime) love story from The Wheelman author Duane Swierczynski.

The night before a big meeting, Jack Eisley is sitting in an airport bar in Philadelphia, chatting up a pretty young blonde. Sure, Jack has a wife and daughter at home, but this is just a little harmless...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312374593
• ISBN13: 9780312374594
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Those three words are the last ones in this roler coaster ride of a book. I won't give away anything of the plot, for that would really spoil the reading entertainment for the next person down the line. What I will say is this book will keep you up late turning pages until its finished, and then you will be left wanting more. The writng is good, the characters well defined and the action non-stop. Perhaps for some the underlying basis for the plot is unrealistic, but I believe that a reader should just accept the premise the author sets out as of it were actual, and just go along for the ride. There's no reason to question some of the leaps of logic in the book; I enjoyed every one of htem, even if I found many of them preposterous. When you have a good book written by a writer with talent, just enjoy it! That's how I look at reading, and it works very well. Buy and read this book: you won't be disappointed!

Powerful rip-snorter of a book

The inventive fusion of action, suspense, SF, and high espionage elements is what makes THE BLONDE such a unique and sure-fire novel. It's a frantic, full-throttle story written with lean, muscular prose that will magnetize you to the pages and force you to keep reading despite your early morning business meeting, dental appointment, or golf game. Swierczynski is a new master of pop pulp and anyone who tries one of his books is bound to be a fan for life. Can't wait for his next one SEVERANCE PACKAGE to hit the shelves.

A White-Hot Bullet Right Between The Eyes

Duane Swierczynski has, with the publication of THE BLONDE become one of the new next-gen crime writers I'm watching. He's an editor-in-chief of a major Philadelphia newspaper, so his lean, muscular prose come to him naturally from a daily grind. The imagination is purely his, but it's a new twist on a lot of the old noir-style books and movies that I love so much. I never know what to expect from his characters. In The Blonde I wasn't even sure who the good guys were until the final pages of the book were sorted out. It was a great ride, and I couldn't stop turning pages once I'd started. I'd read the warnings on the book posted by other writers and reviews, but they really meant it. His previous release from a mainstream publisher came in 2005. THE WHEELMAN was a blistering read that kept you glued to the story in a merciless grip. See, Swiercynski has this take-no-prisoners mentality that just grabs the reader by the throat on page one, introduces a problem the protagonist has to handle just to survive, then turns the tables on him (and the reader!) before another 15 or 20 pages have gone by. Reading the twists and turns of his plots is like constantly getting surprised by an opposing boxer's hooks and jabs slipping right through your defenses. No matter how ready you think you are, you keep getting smashed and broken up, and get left wondering how it's all going to shake out. THE BLONDE has one of the best opening sequences I've seen in a long time. A woman in the Philly airport tells Jack Eisley, the main character, that she's poisoned his drink and he's going to be dead in eight hours. He blows her off, thinking she's just weird. And the reader watches as Jack gives her the slip and walks away. Normally there would be something that would prevent him from doing that. Not in Swierrcynski's world. He finds a reason to make the protagonist give in and go back to the airport hoping to find the woman, Kelly White. Jack's nausea and vomiting convinces him he has been poisoned, so he returns for the antidote. Only the woman fesses up to him and tells him she actually needs him because she's infested with nanobots that will kill her if she's left alone. Okay, we've suddenly entered the Twilight Zone as our crime thriller goes into Michael Crichton overdrive. Then we pick up the next main character. His name is Kowalski. He's an operative for a super-secret government organization. A close reader will remember him from THE WHEELMAN, and I thought it was great that Swierczynski rewards his fans like that. The author's building quite a little violent family out in Philly. But he's not afraid to kill them off, either. Kowalski has been killing Mafia guys off the clock on his own time as revenge for the death of his girlfriend and their child. That plotline goes back to the previous novel, but it isn't necessary to have read it first. It does add to things, though. Now Kowalski's been given a new assignment: Find a profes

Warning: Do Not Open This Book...

...unless you've no plans for the rest of the day. Trust me - this is about as good as modern pulp crime fiction gets - a frantic, dark, and cynical half day romp through a Philadelphia night that combines the lean, no nonsense tough guy style of the classic masters of crime with a neat pop science fiction twist. This is the bizarre offspring of Raymond Chandler, were he writing for the iPod generation, and Michael Crichton, without the tedious baggage of scientific supporting detail. Jack Eisley is a Chicago newsman, traveling to Philly to meet his wife's divorce lawyer. Meeting beautiful blonde Kelly Whyte on the flight, Jack succumbs to a drink in the airport bar. And from the "I poisoned your drink" opening line to a satisfyingly twisted climax 226 pages later that will come too soon, this is a rock-`em, sock-`em, in-your-face thriller that will keep you as close to this book as Kelly, you'll learn, needs to keep Jack. Rising above the crowd in this solid cast is Mike Kowalski, an ultra-secret government operative and part time vigilante who, in his spare time, is assassinating the Philadelphia mob, goomba-by-goomba, to settle an old score. Kowalski is a memorable thug, an indestructible, larger than life lethal weapon of a man who'd be comfortable knocking around with Bennie and the biker in Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia." And though Swiercynski is not one to allow plot complexities to slow down the not stop mayhem, the players and pieces do eventually come together in a conclusion that if macabre, is satisfying. Duane Swierczynski is the real deal - a writer who clearly enjoys his craft and practices it with hip, clean prose that is meant to shock and entertain. I thoroughly enjoyed last year's "The Wheelman"; "The Blonde" obliterates any risk of sophomore jinx. Do yourself a favor - get to know Swierczynski and his rocking tales of Philadelphia noir.

This turns the noir genre on its head

I loved Swierczynski's THE WHEELMAN, but I was wholly unprepared for his follow-up, THE BLONDE. Let me start with its opening lines: "I poisoned your drink." "Excuse me?" "You heard me." "Um, I don't think I did." The blonde lifted her cosmopolitan. "Cheers." I haven't been yanked into a story THAT fast since President Palmer took the big sleep in last season's "24" opener. Now let me quote from THE BLONDE's dust jacket: "It's your typical love story. Boy meets girl. Girl kidnaps boy. Boy loses girl and is pursued by a professional killer carrying a decapitated head in a gym bag." Well, yeah, kinda. But that description barely begins to touch what goes on in this novel. What THE WHEELMAN did for heist stories, THE BLONDE does for noir tales of innocent men pulled into horrible, uncontrollable circumstances. It turns the genre on its head. No, it actually pulls the genre apart, mixes it with a punk sensibility, then reassembles it into something new and unexpected. Think "D.O.A.," the old movie with Edmond O'Brien, stirred vigorously with Michael Crichton. Think "The Fugitive" on crystal meth. But none of those comparisons really work. THE BLONDE is something else entirely. It crisscrosses genres faster than you can blink. And it literally ticks like a time bomb, its brief episodes clicking past with markers like "12:55 a.m.: Behind the Edison Avenue House" and "5:16 a.m.: Frankford El, Approaching Allegheny Station." THE BLONDE is terrific. I've added Duane Swierczynski to my list of "must read" crime authors, alongside Andrew Vachss, Dennis Lehane, and Richard Stark. He can't crank out another book fast enough for me.