Hell and Gone

Starred review from September 12, 2011
At the start of Swierczynski’s frenetic, breathless second action thriller featuring ex-cop Charlie Hardie, the shadowy Accident People have Hardie, who was put through the wringer in the first book (June 2011’s Fun and Games), in their clutches. While his friend Deke Clark, an FBI agent, frantically tries to trace his whereabouts, Hardie finds himself made warden of a surreal underground prison, whose location and true purpose are hidden. With no good options, he does his best to probe the facility’s weak spots, and accurately assess who can, and who can’t, be trusted. Those waiting for the payoff promised in the prologue, in which college student Julie Lippman learns that her boyfriend has supposedly died in a plane crash after spending a semester break building new houses for the poor, will feel amply rewarded by the end. That it’s impossible to guess what’s coming in the third and final installment will tantalize, rather than frustrate, readers.

October 15, 2011
A rugged ex-cop faces his greatest challenge ever as a tortured inmate. College student Julie Lippman decides to take action when her boyfriend Bobby dies in a Nevada plane crash during semester break. The trouble is, Bobby wasn't supposed to be on that plane but rather building houses for the poor. Julie enlists a few friends to help dig up Bobby's grave, but some mysterious figures kill them all. Seventeen years later, one-time top cop Charlie Hardie is haunted by the death of his partner Nate. Hardie's been hired to protect troubled Hollywood actress Lane Madden, targeted by Mann, an infamous hit woman. Wounded in a shootout, he's whisked away by EMTs. Over the next several weeks, Hardie, drifting in and out of consciousness, loses strength and the use of one leg. When he wakes up fully, he's a prisoner, at first overseen by Mann and then thrown into a bizarre prison, where he's told he's the new warden. The prisoners are shackled, and the guards are violent and terrified of a disembodied voice called the Prisonmaster, who sees all. Meanwhile, in the outside world, Hardie's FBI pal Deke Clark begins to look for him but stops abruptly when a Big Brother–like figure contacts him with a video monitoring every move of him and his family. It looks as if Hardie must escape on his own. Readers of this middle installment in Swierczynski's Charlie Hardie trilogy (Fun & Games, 2011) who suspend disbelief will be rewarded with nail-biting suspense, ample twists and a crackling narrative style.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2011

Well, bam, bam, bam. Charlie Hardie, who appears this June in Fun and Games, now finds himself at a secret facility where crazed killers can be studied. And he's the warden. Next up in this trilogy: Point and Shoot, ready in September. Swierczynski is a regular contributor to Marvel Comics, and this is being pitched not only to action lovers but to comic books fans.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2011
Picking up where Fun and Games (2011), Swierczynski's first Charlie Hardie novel, left off, the second starts with the former PI in still hotter water. After the gun battle that ended the debut, a groggy Charlie finds himself in an ambulance, but it isn't going to the hospital. When he comes to, he's deep underground, in the prison of all prisons, run by the Accident People. But is he the warden or another prisoner? Hardly matters, since there's no escape either way. And who are the Accident People? Do they really run a secret America? Whatever; Charlie is only interested in getting out. The compelling premise pulls all our paranoid strings, and Swierczynski, like a mad scientist twirling dials, ratchets the tension ever tighter. The claustrophobic setting drives the reader a little crazy, too, but that's the whole point. And don't expect any release quite yet. The novel ends virtually in midsentence, like a 1950s movie serial, with Charlie in his worst fix yet. Stay tuned for part three of what may be the most unusual thriller series in a long, long time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)