Review: The Night Driver

Car chases in movies have always been a staple of action movies for a long time.  I remember the first time I watched, Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy in The Getaway, a sophisticated heist movie, oozed with old school Western aesthetics. These movies usually resonated with me long after, watching them. Even the car chase in The French Connection, was memorable not only because it was exciting but also because it was shot near my old neighborhood.

It is no mistake that popular culture is obsessed with these characters and the cars they drive as they represent the rebel in all of us, even if it is in a car.  There have been whole franchises made about them like The Fast and The Furious and The Transporter. Then there was the recent and more in tune with the old school movies I watched, Wheelman. Which is why I was more than keen to read Ken Lowery and Gavin Guidry’s mystery, Night Driver, which provides readers with a different twist.

In the opening pages, we meet the driver, an unnamed man, driving alone at night. The reader, right away, gets a peak at his thoughts, as something he has done slowly unravels at his very being. Panel by panel, he questions his every decision, his every action, as he ponders on what he could have done different. By book’s end, our driver breaks, as his mind start playing tricks on him and the guilt of his actions overcomes him.

Overall, a slow burn thriller, that reads like a better version of Tom Hardy’s Locke, with the added elements of murder and mayhem. The story by Lowery is intelligent, and gripping. The art by Guidry and Micah Meyers is stylish and striking. Altogether, somewhere between Michael Douglas’s Falling Down and Kevin Spacey’s Swimming with Sharks, lies this suspenseful twist on the modern laborer whose tale ends on the road.

Story: Ken Lowery Art: Gavin Guidry Letterer: Micah Meyers
Story: 10 Art: 9.0 Overall: 9.7 Recommendation: Buy