Clocking in at an amazingly short 147 pages, Driven is a breath of fresh air when compared to the books I have been reading lately. The writing is clean and simple. The sentences short and to the point. The vocabulary purely functional. I liked it.
Driven finds our mysterious hero Driver alive and well and living in Phoenix. In the opening scene two men try to kill him. He kills them, but not before they kill his girlfriend. This leads to the Jeremiah Johnson plotline where random men crawl out of the woodwork and do mortal combat with Driver.
Cars play a large part in Driven, just as they did in Drive, but there’s not even the hint that Driver picks up spare change by being a getaway driver. He spends time tuning up his ride. He loses tails by being a better driver than those who are following him. He meets a woman who also works on cars, but he’s still a pretty much a cold fish on the emotions front.
With the help of a few friends, he narrows down the pool of potentials that want him dead. He again ends up hanging out with mysterious Mob Boss types who live by their own rules and want Driver dead for reasons of their own. Driver kills with speed and efficiency which is never fully explained. He pauses once in a while to remember the good old days when he was a stunt driver.
Driven is mostly one long chase scene and the explanations, when they come, don’t really seem to matter. Driver will always have someone chasing him down and trying to kill him. One day they’ll succeed, but not today.
