DRIVER (James Sallis) - March 27/10

I guess the comparison to Jim Thompson should've been a warning sign. This short yet long novel, revolving around a mysterious figure named Driver and the fallout of a job (that has, naturally, turned bad), is intriguing initially, as Sallis effectively peppers the book with several impressively brutal sequences and a spare, non-linear structure that is, for a little while, quite compelling. But Sallis' almost comically hard-bitten style grows old by about the midpoint and it becomes increasingly impossible to work up any enthusiasm for the relentlessly seedy story. This reads like a truncated screenplay, which leads me to believe that it'll work a whole lot better as a movie. ** out of ****