Review by C.J. Bunce
Pierce Brosnan is 71. Usually when someone is on the cover of a book, you see that person as the star of the story you’re about to read. Even if Victor Gischler’s Edgar-nominated novel Fast Charlie was made into a movie starring Brosnan, who was pushing 70 when he made the movie, you won’t be able to imagine all that is done by Charlie Swift could be done by any man–even one at the top of his game. So even though this is Hard Case Crime’s movie tie-in edition of the novel originally published as Gun Monkeys in 2001, you’ll enjoy the book more if you figure Brosnan isn’t the lead.
Not that casting a movie with actors in their 70s can’t work–it did for Liam Neeson in Marlowe. But this isn’t a review of the movie.
Although Fast Charlie reads like a first novel, it’s a solid shoot ’em up story. It’s not full of much by way of plot layers, and for an Edgar nominee, it also doesn’t have any real mystery. It’s a modern-day Charley Varrick, but without the heists. The crimes here are all in the past, and this is a mob plot, where Fast Charlie is the #2 guy under Stan, who is getting pushed out of his leadership position in his comfortable crime nook in Florida. Stan has been keeping a couple sets of books and the FBI gets wind of the operation just as Stan and his entire swarm of thugs are getting wiped out.
Readers will find many genre beats from the Florida-set Burn Notice, including the mom and the little brother. Only here it’s difficult to place a time period for the story. Characters drive LTDs and Buick Skylarks and Ford Tempos while they use cell phones. Both MTV and MSNBC are mentioned playing on the TV. So the quirk is remembering this was a contemporary story that we’re just reading 25 years later. So where Max Allan Collins would be setting the stage better for his Nolan or Quarry, Gischler’s story is all dialogue–and one guy in pursuit of those accounting books and his boss who has gone AWOL.
This is almost the kind of book Robert Rodriguez would pick up for an action splatter flick, but it’s not quite as operatic as something Quentin Tarantino would tap. Most of my read was trying to figure out the timing of the setting and how a guy who is shot in his side and through his hand could still be defeating the type of giant, strong people hired as thugs to kill someone for money. A nice heist would have made this better.
Charlie picks up a girlfriend along the way, a taxidermy artist that seems wedged into the story for the sake of having a quirky girlfriend. This kind of thing actually worked in the 1970s in Charley Varrick. I even found myself casting Sheree North and Andrew Robinson as Charlie’s girlfriend and his New Guy back-up mobster. Once the movie makes it to the streamers, I’ll be anxious to see what was kept and what was pulled, although Morena Baccarin and Brosnan as a couple doesn’t quite work even on paper. But that’s the thing with movie tie-ins–even when you’re talking about the book coming before the movie–you keep coming back to incongruent studio choices.
If you’re not a fan of Crime Does Not Pay stories, you’re in luck. Charlie is all anti-hero, and the idea of him killing people without any thought or concern isn’t even addressed as you’d find in most pulp crime novels. Only because it was the last Hard Case Crime novel we reviewed here at borg, it’s worth noting that Scott Von Doviak’s 2024 Edgar nominated novel Lowdown Road does all the crime tropes much better.
By the way, Buffy the Vampire Slayer diehards may already be familiar with Gischler, who wrote the tenth season of the Angel and Faith comic book series.
I enjoyed Fast Charlie simply because it requires the reader to get active following Charlie and his journey. It’s not a splashy contemporary crime story, but Gischler does his job. Fans of shoot ’em up crime stories, order Fast Charlie now here at Amazon. The movie is not yet on Netflix or Hulu or Max, but it’s available to rent on Prime Video.
