Welcome to the Game by Craig Henderson

Published by ‎ Atlantic Monthly Press on November 15, 2022

Spencer Burnham is British. He was once a champion rally racer but moved to Detroit and used his British charm to sell cars after he lost his competitive edge. Now Spencer has problems. Since his wife died, he’s been drinking and doing drugs, trying to kill the pain or dim the memories. The drugs put distance between Spencer and his daughter when she needs him the most. Spencer’s high-end car dealership isn’t paying its bills. His friend Chris is letting Spencer sleep on his couch while Spencer’s daughter sleeps in the spare bedroom. Child Protective Services thinks the daughter is in a dangerous situation. Spencer manages to avoid obeying the rules that CPS imposed on him by shagging the social worker.

Dominic McGrath operates criminal enterprises, including money laundering. He keeps competing drug gangs at war so they’ll be too busy to set up their own laundering operations. McGrath has a driver pick up their drug proceeds and exchange it for clean cash. When McGrath suspects that his driver has become a police informant, he needs a new driver. He thinks Spencer would be perfect for the job.

Some of McGrath’s subordinates aren’t all that sure about Spencer. His accountant Cal is humiliated when Spencer uses Cal’s car to demonstrate his driving skill. Eddie wants to do the driving himself. McGrath’s muscle, the Yo-Yo, is suspicious of everyone. On the other hand, Johnny Boy, a disbarred lawyer for the Chicago mob, believes McGrath is right about Spencer.

Threats and blackmail persuade Spencer to enlist as their pick-up driver, but McGrath really needs him for a scheme to steal the cash a bank intends for an armored car. The scheme requires the kind of precise driving that a rally racer has mastered. Spencer isn’t thrilled about taking a job picking up drug proceeds, but he needs the money and doesn’t want to lose his daughter and what little he has left of his life. He eventually realizes that working for McGrath may trigger the end of his life. He needs to come up with a plan of his own if he’s to survive.

Spencer isn’t an action hero. He takes a few beatings and never gets in a decent punch of his own. He’s a driver, not a tough guy. That makes him a refreshing thriller protagonist. It’s easy to sympathize with Spencer, although a reader will agree with Chris that four years is enough time to mourn a dead wife and get a life together for the sake of a dependent daughter. Whether Spencer will learn that lesson (and you know the answer to that, don’t you?) is the hook that keeps the reader invested in a protagonist who is, in many ways, a good-hearted loser.

The plot is entertaining and generally credible — more credible than many modern thrillers — although the reader will need to slide past a few improbable or unexplained details. Many of the novel’s action scenes center on fast driving. For that reason, Welcome to the Game might make a good movie — a better movie, for sure, than any movie with Fast or Furious in the title. Craig Henderson makes the driving scenes easy to visualize, giving the novel a cinematic quality. Violence isn’t described in gruesome detail, but this is nevertheless a violent novel. Not many characters, good or bad, are still alive when the story ends.

The story could have ended in many ways, but Henderson made surprising choices that assure an unpredictable conclusion. A clever plot and strong characterization make Welcome to the Game one of the better thrillers I’ve read this year.

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