Following on the heels of The Wheelman, Duane Swierczynski spins the literary equivalent of cotton candy, if such a confection were made with acid. The Blonde is a non-stop thrill ride. The kind of reading that goes down so easy the reader will gobble page after page. A story so wild and over-the-top, it feels like a guilty pleasure.
The Set-up
From the opening line – "I poisoned your drink" – the reader hangs on every word. The line is spoken by the titular woman to Jack Eisley, a man hanging out at an airport bar in Philadelphia. Jack has an inevitable and horrible meeting the next morning with his wife's divorce attorney. He's told he has only 10 hours to live, unless he takes the antidote the blonde offers. An antidote she can only give him if he accompanies her to a hotel room. Jack thinks it's a con, until he feels sick, just as she predicted.
Meanwhile, in a parallel plotline, Mike Kowalski is getting ready to whack another Mafia member (the ones responsible for killing his fiance in The Wheelman), when his boss orders him to find a woman named Kelly White. Three guesses who that is and her hair color.