February 09 2026, 20:17

Drive

Author: James Sallis

First published: 2005

A short novel, around 45,000 words. We follow the literally-named Driver, a stuntman starting a career in Hollywood who instead chose a life as the getaway driver for armed robbers. The story jumps artfully around Driver’s whole life, concentrating on a job that goes wrong and the fallout from it, but also spending lots of time in the minutiae of life in Los Angeles in what seems like the eighties. It’s a timeless setting. The only clues are the lack of mobile phones, the many film references and the model years of cars Driver steals for work.

This 2006 novel is an expansion of a short story Sallis wrote in 2002, and my copy of the novel has Ryan Gosling from the 2011 film adaptation on the front—so that’s three versions, followed by a sequel Sallis wrote in 2012, Driven. He held on to this character for a decade or more, even though there is very little to know about him from the page. That’s interesting. Driver is a kid with a rough upbringing fleeing to Los Angeles to try and make a life doing the only thing he’s good at. He’s a character that could easily be a cliché, but instead holds the reader’s attention through the voice Sallis uses to tell the story.

The point of view switches when necessary for the plot, and that keeps things interesting. We briefly see the world through the eyes of underground medic Doc, incompetent mafioso Nino, and the more accomplished killer Bernie Rose. There are friendlier characters with names like Standard, Manny and Shannon.

Manny is a rich screenwriter living in a rundown house who takes Driver out for expensive meals to talk literature. I wonder if he’s a proxy for Sallis himself. Driver eats a lot of meals which are described in great detail. These men love to eat well in their otherwise grotty lives. The sentences and characters are noir to their bones. A refreshing read.

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