Smoke

Smoke by Donald E. Westlake
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As someone who started out writing cheap, tawdry paperbacks in the late 50s and early 60s, most of Donald Westlake's books are pretty short, under 300 pages. For whatever reason this 1995 novel is 452 pages according to Goodreads. It would really have been better if it had been as short as most of his other books because the story just seems to drag for no reason.

I bought this because I had recently finished rewatching the first season of Syfy's Invisible Man series from 2000-2002. It had a similar premise about a thief who's shanghaied by scientists into becoming part of an experiment that turns him invisible. But in that show the thief is implanted with a gland that secretes a chemical to bend light to make him invisible, so it goes over his clothes and it wears off after a little while.

This is more like the old movies where Freddy is injected with a formula and eats another one and his body becomes permanently invisible. He can't wear clothes or else he'll be visible. Being a thief, Freddy soon uses his new superpower for personal gain by robbing a fur storage place and jewelry wholesaler and so on. But there are obvious downsides, especially with his ditzy girlfriend Peggy. And then he's chased by a corrupt cop and people working for the tobacco company that inadvertently funded his creation.

All of this as I said goes on far too long. There are complications thrown in that don't really need to be there. At one point Freddy goes to a party where the scientists who created him are and then makes some critical mistakes that he should by then have known would cause him trouble. In particular he decides to "hide" by doing laps in the pool? It makes no sense. If he were just floating in the pool then he wouldn't be seen, but he should have known by then that the act of swimming would make it easy for him to be seen. This was after he drank champagne that he should have known would give away his location.

The way it ends, it could have ended a lot sooner. It's a nice premise and there are some fun bits, but there's just too much of it.

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