Driven E-Book

James Sallis

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Drive, James Sallis's critically acclaimed thriller about a movie stunt-man who moonlights as a getaway driver for the mob, became an award-winning film, directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan and introduced Sallis to a worldwide audience - this is the stunning sequel Seven years have passed since Driver ended his campaign against those who double-crossed him. He has left the old life, become Paul West and founded a successful business back in Phoenix. But walking down the street one day, he and his fiancee are attacked by two men and, while Driver dispatches both, his fiancee is killed. Sinking back into anonymity, aided by his friend Felix, an ex-gangbanger and Desert Storm vet, Driver realises that his past stalks him - and will not stop. He has to turn and face it.

Leseprobe

The stunning sequel to the critically acclaimedDrive.

Seven years have passed since Driver ended his campaign against those who double-crossed him. He has left the old life, become Paul West and founded a successful business back in Phoenix.

But walking down the street one day, he and his fiancee are attacked by two men and, while Driver dispatches both, his fiancee is killed.

Sinking back into anonymity, aided by his friend Felix, an ex-gangbanger and Desert Storm vet, Driver realises that his past stalks him - and will not stop.

He has to turn and face it.

Praise for Driven

‘Driven is a lean and nasty piece of neo-noir. I took my seat on page one and didn’t get back up again until it ended (far too quickly.) Always a pleasure to be in the hands of a master like James Sallis’

– Dennis Lehane

‘Terse, brutal, poetic, perfectly wrought sequel. Come into this excellent novel cold, strap in, just hit the gas, and go’

– Publishers Weekly starred review

‘Lean and lethal noir’

– New York Times

‘If James Sallis’ totemic Driver seemed somehow superhuman in the original Drive, then in its sequel, things have evolved even further’

– Declan Tan, 3ammagazine

‘Sallis, perhaps the most genuinely poetic crime writer alive, bleeds tone on every page, crafting sentences that read like a Thomas Hardy lyric’

– Booklist starred review

Praise for James Sallis

‘Sallis is an unsung genius of crime writing’

– Independent on Sunday

‘James Sallis is a superb writer’

– Times

‘James Sallis - he’s right up there, one of the best of the best… Sallis, also a poet, is capable of smart phrasing and moments of elegiac energy’

– Ian Rankin, Guardian

‘[A] master of America noir…Sallis creates vivid images in very few words and his taut, pared down prose is distinctive and powerful’

– Sunday Telegraph

‘Sallis’s spare, concrete prose achieves the level of poetry’

– Telegraph

‘Sallis is a wonderful writer, dark, lyrical and compelling’

– Spectator

‘Sallis is a fastidious man, intelligent and widely read. There’s nothing slapdash or merely strategic about his work’

– London Review of Books

‘Unlike those pretenders who play in dark alleys and think they’re tough, James Sallis writes from an authentic noir sensibility, a state of mind that hovers between amoral indifference and profound existential despair’

– New York Times

‘carefully crafted, restrained and eloquent’

– Times Literary Supplement

‘James Sallis is without doubt the most underrated novelist currently working in America’

– Catholic Herald

‘Sallis writes crime novels that read like literature’

– Los Angeles Times

DRIVEN

JAMES SALLIS

This one is for Vicky, in appreciation and with great affection

Contents

Title PageDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-oneChapter Twenty-twoChapter Twenty-threeChapter Twenty-fourChapter Twenty-fiveChapter Twenty-sixChapter Twenty-sevenChapter Twenty-eightChapter Twenty-nineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty-oneChapter Thirty-twoChapter Thirty-threeChapter Thirty-fourChapter Thirty-fiveChapter Thirty-sixChapter Thirty-sevenChapter Thirty-eightChapter Thirty-nineChapter FortyChapter Forty-oneAbout the AuthorSelected Works by James SallisCopyright

DRIVEN

Chapter One

They came for him just after 11:00 on a Saturday morning, two of them. It was hot going hotter; sunlight caught in the fine sheen of sweat on Elsa’s forehead. A hint of movement in the side of his eye as they passed a short side street—and the first one was there. He spun, slamming his foot and the whole of his body weight against the outside of the man’s right knee, and heard it give. By the time the man was down, that same foot hit his throat. He shuddered twice, trying to pull in air through the shattered windpipe, and was still. The second had come up behind by then, but Driver was down, rolling, and behind him, left arm clamped around his neck, right elbow locked over the wrist.

It was all over in minutes. He understood then what had delayed the second man’s attack. Elsa lay against the wall of an abandoned café, blood pumping from the wound beneath her breast.

She had been trying to smile up at him as the light went out of her eyes.

Chapter Two

In movies the guy who almost drowned shoots up out of the water and into sunlight like a porpoise, gulping at the air so long denied him, relief writ large on his face.

When Driver first surfaced, six, seven years ago, it had been like that, only in reverse. Sunlight, air, and freedom—his impulse was to dive back in. He wanted the darkness, safety, anonymity. Needed it. Didn’t understand how he could live without it.

He was 26.

Chapter Three

Now he was 32, sitting at a table on the deck of around to the side, away from the street.

“They first set this place down,” Felix was telling him, “it was an in-your-face beachhouse. Sand every which way you looked. Kinda didn’t take in as to how the hood’s full of stray cats? Cats loved it, brought them in from miles around. Biggest sandbox ever, you know? Reassessments were made at the corporate level.” Hands still on the table, Felix leaned back, sleeves pulling to show the lower edge of tattoos gone colorless. No hearts, anchors, women or women’s names here. Knives. A flame or two. A wolf. “Long time back. And you know how few things go the distance around here. The food’s crap, but it’s dependable.”

Driver didn’t know that much about Felix, about his background anyway. Knew he’d been in Desert Storm, a Ranger he figured, from what little Felix said. And sometime before that, a gangbanger back in good old east L.A. Some kind of bodyguard or enforcer. A lifetime of walking through doors into new lives. They’d met on a job, where it seemed Felix was along mostly to look out for one of the other guys. That’s how Desert Storm came up; Felix and his boy had been in it together. Rule is, once the job’s over, you’re strangers. But something had clicked. Driver and Felix stayed in touch.

And who better to hang with when you went to ground? One way or another, Felix had been off the screen all his life.

“Appreciate your help,” Driver said. The coffee tasted faintly of the fish tacos that were HP’s specialty.

Felix’s eyes followed a pair of women being seated by the front railing. Mother and daughter? Twenty, thirty years apart, dressed alike. Same body language, same legs.

“Anything else we need to do?”

“Like?”

“Oh, like persuade whoever’s on your trail what a bad idea that could turn out to be.”

“These aren’t the kind of people you step up and talk to.”

“I wasn’t planning on a conversation.”

“You wouldn’t be. But there’s no need. I’ve gone invisible. They can’t see me. It’s over.”

“Invisible, huh? That’s why we’re sitting back here by the dumpster and you came in with a hat sitting halfway down your nose.” He sipped his own coffee, made a face. “Doesn’t smell near as bad as it tastes. That is one cool hat, though.”

The older of the women smiled at Felix. Highland Park, upper East Side, Scottsdale kind of woman. Money, class, privilege. Yet here she was smiling over at this middle-aged hardass with worn-out tats and bad hair. Something about Felix did that to people.

The younger woman glanced over to see what her companion was looking at. Then she smiled too.