Fast Charlie by Victor Gischler Review

Charlie Swift’s crew is gunned down by a rival mob boss and his own head honcho, Stan, gets taken. Out for revenge, Charlie swiftly (hehe) finds himself in the midst of a complex plan involving the Feds and the case he was supposed to hand over holds some very valuable secrets - secrets hired killers are after him for. Everybody’s on the run and everybody’s packing - but is Charlie fast enough to beat em all?

Victor Gischler’s debut novel Fast Charlie (originally published as Gun Monkeys but got retitled when the Pierce Brosnan movie called Fast Charlie recently came out) is a really good crime novel - until around about the 100 page mark. Out of 256 pages. D’oh. Then Fast Charlie gets boring - fast.

What was initially a well-paced, entertaining crime thriller loses its pacing and becomes a leaden slog for the remainder of the book as Charlie wanders around looking for people and the plot becomes convoluted and tedious. Gotta find Stan, gotta find Benny, gotta find his brother’s girl, gotta find blah blah blah. I stopped caring long before the trite end.

Charlie’s also an unstoppable protagonist so there’s never any tension in any of the conflict. I understand he has to be as there’s no story otherwise, but it doesn’t change the way the story becomes predictable and boring as a result. As for his character - like all the others in the book - it’s simply a staple of the genre: capable, tough, bland. Nothing original, surprising or memorable being presented here.

This is also 100% a nitpick that in no way affects the story, but on p.132, Benny is described as having “water beaded on his bald head” and then on p.136 Charlie “brushed the wet hair out of (Benny’s) eyes” - so which is it: is Benny bald or not? It’s just something minor I noted that added to my feeling that the writing didn’t just lose steam after around the 100 page mark but Gischler himself lost interest and hacked his way through the remainder of the novel just to get to the end, much like I did in reading it.

I was enjoying Fast Charlie initially so it’s a shame the story didn’t have the legs to go the distance, faltered before the halfway point and never recovered. A weak crime novel I can’t recommend - there’s plenny good crime fiction out there worth reading by the likes of Elmore Leonard and Ken Bruen instead of this one. Gischy boy isn’t up there amongst such exalted company with this forgettable effort.