Review: The Driver

Mandasue Heller, The Driver (Hodder 2010)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11945787-the-driver?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_15

Joe moves into a new flat on a council estate, pricking the interest of the fellow residents. There’s single mum Cheryl and her on-again-off-again ex, elderly overweight Molly and her cat, Carl and Mel, nosey racist Kettler, four Ukrainian hookers, and scary Eddie with his girlfriend Chrissie and scary pitbull.
Cheryl throws Joe a welcome party, and he learns that Eddie is the hookers’ pimp as well as neighbourhood drug dealer and extortionist. Over the following weeks and months, he witnesses several of the pitiful personalities suffering under Eddie’s oppression and realises that Eddie keeps the hookers locked up.
Eddie offers Joe a job as his driver while he does his drug runs. Joe becomes matey with Carl, a rather sweet druggie who works for Eddie. Eddie’s other boy Clive also seems less evil than his boss. Joe mostly does what he’s told, but nevertheless comes under suspicion from the gang. Everyone’s side stories come together in a clash on one eventful day at the estate.
This book has no likable characters. The gangsters are monsters; the whores pitiful; the junkies disgusting. Even Joe, the hero, is hardly one you’d bring home to mother. It makes painful reading following the sufferings of the women done wrong by their disreputable menfolk. However, Katya—the prettiest of the hookers—wins one’s sympathy and does the right thing in the end. And Joe musters enough pluck to save the day.
An easy read.