Book Review: The Drift

Reviewed By: Jon Jordan - Crime Spree Magazine - RAM

The Drift     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
John Ridley
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Knopf, 2002

The Drift is a dark tale. It is also a tale of the road, kind of. Most of the book involves travel by train, not passenger trains, but train travel the way hobos do it, jumping into boxcars and such. The Drift also feels like a tale of redemption, but it’s not really that either. The main character used to be called Charles Harmon, but now he’s known as Brain Nigger Charlie. The reader tags along as Charlie undertakes a bit of a mission for an old friend, find a missing girl. As we ride the rails with BN Charlie we get a look at his past and how a successful LA businessman ends up moving around the country as part of an almost unknown society of cast-offs and lost souls with nothing to call his except a bag of odds and ends, and maybe some dignity. Maybe.

As I started the book I was a little taken a back by the style of writing, but I quickly lost track of that as I was suck into the story like a meteor into a black hole. I was almost mesmerized by it. I literally could not stop reading. Some of the things encountered on the way are not pretty. And they are not meant to be, because life isn’t always pretty either. So this book not be for everyone, but if you don’t mind your reading to get you a bit down and dirty, showing you the underside of the world we live in, then you will enjoy this book. What I want to know is if John Ridley actually rode the rails for a while, because he writes like he did.

Jon Jordan - Crime Spree Magazine - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jon Jordan - Crime Spree Magazine - RAM