I finished Dave Zeltserman's Fast Lane last night. Quite a
read. It's really something how this unreliable, or is he,
narrator pulls you in.
SEMI-SPOILERS (I'm not giving away any specifics, but in
dealing with the plotting in general, I hint at some things
I'm not sure I would have wanted to know before I read
it.)
Johnny Lane's folksy voice immediately made me think of
Thompson's Lou Ford. So I was suspicious of how reliable he
was as a narrator from the very beginning. However, I was
wondering whether Lane was just fooling the directly
addressed reader or himself, too. It becomes increasingly
clear it's the former as Lane "remembers" to tell the reader
things he previously "forgot" to mention.
The pacing is also very good. At first I was kind of afraid
that the book would end with a revelation that, while
startling, would not have been at all surprising, since Lane
often exposes more of himself than he seems to be aware of
(which is a very neat balancing act of Zeltserman's).
However, the reader officially finds out this secret just
before the halfway point and the rest is an increasingly
wild, dark ride as the consequences are dealt with and the
true Johnny comes forth more and more.
Yes, the book all flows from a pretty incredible coincidence,
but once you get past that (which really isn't hard, one of
those things we tend to accept more easily in crime novels
than real life), everything flows quite naturally.
So Dave, when's the next book coming out?
And thanks Juha for publishing books like this.
Mark
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