The Blonde
Authors: Duane Swierczynski
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Hard-Boiled, #Thrillers, #General, #Noir
Gentlemen (and ladies) prefer
The Blonde
…
“Two parts adrenaline rush, one part medical thriller, this twisted story starts with a bang and rarely slows down. Full of offbeat characters, excruciatingly reckless twists, and sardonic humor, this fun ride shows great promise for a rising author.”
—
Library Journal
(starred review)
“This is delicious postmodern hard-boiled punk rock storytelling. Swierczynski’s hit man character is as funny and fresh as he is fierce and quick.
The Blonde
is masterfully paced, wonderfully rendered, and devastatingly entertaining.”
—Greg Rucka,
Eisner Award-winning author of
Queen & Country
and
2006 Barry Award-nominated thriller
Private Wars
“[An] entertaining thriller … rapid-fire pacing, hard-boiled dialogue, and excellent local color.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Duane Swierczynski’s new novel,
The Blonde
, is as lean as a starving model, mean as a snake, and fast as a jet. It’s also one hell of a fine read. This guy has got to be the hottest new thing in crime fiction, and
The Blonde
is one of the best crime reads I’ve had in some time.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award-winning author of
Sunset and Sawdust
“Page-turning tension … a story so bizarre that it just might be true.”
—
Kirkus Reviezvs
“
The Blonde
had me at hello. Well, technically she had me at ‘I poisoned your drink.’ It’s a hilarious nail-biter, a tour-de-force by a young writer who has already carved out this unique take on the crime genre so it’s futile to compare it to anything else, or try to come up with those weird combinations, such as if X married Y while on Drug Z, their baby might come out looking like
The Blonde
. It is sui generis. It is perfect.”
—Laura Lippman, bestselling author of
What the Dead Know
“Another fast, funny, and action-packed outing from a writer who, fortunately for us, doesn’t seem to know how to slow down.”
—
Booklist
“I’ve rarely seen a review where the word adore was used. I adored this novel. The opening few pages are sheer brilliant—black as sin, [with] demented laugh-out-loud tension. Dialogue to sell your soul for and an array of characters as weird and wondrous as anything Hiassen ever conceived. This is new noir: neon lit with marvelous beautiful writing. And okay, I fess up … I fell in love with
The Blonde
. Jeez, I’d let her poison me any day.”
—Ken Bruen,
Shamus Award-winning author of
Calibre
and
American Skin
“Quite a ride. The prose is hard-boiled enough to crack walnuts and the action more precipitous than a bobsled run.”
—
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Insanely inventive. This inspired high-concept thriller rockets from climax to climax with an intensity that will leave you breathless. It’s like the movie
Speed
—only with brains.”
—Charles Ardai,
editor of the Hard Case Crime series
“
The Blonde
… rockets forward with inventive ferocity. [The] double helix of a plot uncoils in a rapid-fire series of time-coded moments that generate a relentless tension … brilliantly paced insanity.”
—
The Houston Chronicle
“I got whiplash from turning these pages so fast. The cleverest, wittiest, and most relentless novel I’ve read in a long, long time. A dazzling piece of work.”
—Ed Gorman, award-winning author of the Sam McCain mysteries
“Mr. Swierczynski knows how to streamline a story, keep the pace breakneck, sucking all the oxygen out of the room while he tells you this very gritty and nervy story about a pick-up gone wrong. Delicious dialogue, funny realizations, and one hell of a ride.”
—Frank Bascombe,
Ainh It Cool News
“
The Blonde
is a shot of pure noir adrenaline for the twenty-first century. It left me battered, bruised, bleeding, dazed, confused, and down-right goofy. And all I did was read it! Think how the poor characters must feel. Duane Swierczynski writes the way Sam Peckinpah used to direct: with a mad passion to awaken the slumbering masses and energize them with his enthusiasm for the material at hand.
The Blonde
rocks!”
—Terrill Lee Lankford, author of
Earthquake Weather
and
Blonde Lightning
“
The Blonde
will be the most madcap, mordantly funny, and completely mesmerizing novel you will read this year.”
—
Mystery News
“A frenzied, surreal, gore-splattered exploration into the dark side of humanity’s psyche—from our self-absorbed dreams to our twisted obsessions and addictions.
The Blonde
is wild, fast, and breathtakingly bodacious—an absolute bombshell of a read.”
—Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble
“Swierczynski’s lean writing is gritty and darkly comédie.
The Blonde
is riveting from the first page to the last.”
—
Mystery Scene
“Swierczynski’s follow-up to
The Wheelman
—my favorite book of 2005— is a high-concept thriller that’s a master class in succinct, imaginative, intelligent, suspenseful writing. The characters are fresh, the action is original, the pace is relentless, and the central premise is a doozy.”
—Allan Guthrie, Edgar-nominated author of
Hard Man
“Pure pulp-fiction popcorn, in all the best ways—simply one of the most ripsnorting reads of the year. Hook up with this blonde as soon as you can.”
—Kevin Burton Smith,
January
magazine’s Best Crime Fiction of 2006 list
A
BookSense
Pick for December 2006
A Mystery Bookstore Top 10 of 2006 Employee Pick
A Mystery Bookstore November Crime Club Pick
A Mysterious Bookshop November Employee Pick
A January
magazine Best Crime Fiction of 2006 Pick
Also by Duane Swierczynski
The Wheelman
Secret Dead Men
Damn Near Dead
(editor)
THE
BLONDE
Duane
Swierczynski
ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BLONDE.
Copyright © 2006 by Duane Swierczynski. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Design by Kathryn Parise
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Swierczynski, Duane.
The blonde / Duane Swierczynski.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37459-4
ISBN-10: 0-312-37459-3
1. Blondes—Fiction. 2. Poisoning—Fiction. 3. Assassins—Fiction.
4. Murder for hire—Fiction. 5. Philadelphia (Pa.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.W53 B55 2006
813′.6—dc22
2006046214
First St. Martin’s Minotaur Paperback Edition: November 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Sunshine, the other redhead in my life
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
—
RAYMOND CHANDLER
Liberties Bar,
Philadelphia International Airport
I
poisoned your drink.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Urn, I don’t think I did.”
The blonde lifted her cosmopolitan. “Cheers.”
But Jack didn’t return the gesture. He kept a hand on his pint glass, which held the last two inches of the boilermaker he’d been nursing for the past fifteen minutes.
“Did you say you
poisoned
me?”
“Are you from Philadelphia?”
“What did you poison me with?”
“Can’t you be gracious and answer a girl’s question?”
Jack looked around the airport bar, which was done up like a Colonial-era public house, only with neon Coors Light signs. Instead of two more airline gates in the terminal, they’d put in a square bar, surrounded by small tables jammed up against one another. Sit at the bar and you were treated to the view of the backs of the neon signs—all black metal and tubing and dust—a dented
metal ice bin, red plastic speed pourers stuck in the tops of Her-radura, Absolut Citron, Dewar’s, and a plastic cocktail napkin dispenser with the logo
JACK & COKE: AMERICA’S COCKTAIL
.
For commuters with a long layover, this was the only place to be. What, were you going to shop for plastic Liberty Bells and Rocky T-shirts all evening? The bar was packed.
But amazingly, no one else seemed to have heard her. Not the guy in the shark-colored suit standing next to the girl. Not the bartender, with a black vest and white sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
“You’re kidding.”
“About you being from Philadelphia?”
“About you poisoning me.”
“That again? For the record, yes, I poisoned you. I squeezed a tasteless, odorless liquid into your beer while you were busy staring at a brunette with a shapely ass and low-hanging breasts. The one on her cell, running her fingers through her hair.”
Jack considered this. “Okay. So where’s the dropper?”
“Dropper?”
“The one you used to squeeze poison into my drink. You had to use something.”
“Oh, I’ll show you the dropper. But first you have to answer my question. Are you from Philadelphia?”
“What does it matter? You’ve just poisoned me, and I’m about to die in Philadelphia, so I guess, from this point on, I’ll always be in Philadelphia.”