Duane Swierczynski

A rather harsh way to learn you are fired!

Oh Duane, Duane, Duane. You are such a twisted boy. -grin-

***** This review contains some spoilers. *****

Severance Package starts out with a nice little murder and picks up speed from there on.
When seven employees are told they actually work for a secret government office and that they are being shut down, their day only gets interesting from there. The boss has decided that to save face he must kill them all and commit suicide. The employees show more object.
We readers are then subjected to a fast-paced story of violent, gruesome and very creative death scenes.

It's all so much fun! Come now, haven't you secretly imagined doing in that certain supervisor or annoying employee? With Severance Package, you can do all that and more! In your imagination that is!

Severance Package is a rocking story that breaks the rules at high speed. Then it slaps you in the face with gory and gleeful fun!

I would highly recommend this to anyone that enjoys action packed stories. You'll be laughing out loud, if you have a sense of humor like mine, while being awed by the imagination of the author. Or maybe we should be worried about the author. I know I would be if I worked with him! -grin- show less

If there’s a character that sums up what Grant Morrison’s termed the ‘dark age’ of comics it’s Deadpool. Created by Rob Liefeld, enfant terrible (emphasis on the terrible) Deadpool combines frankly tedious ultraviolence with half-arsed postmodernism, the character being self-aware enough to know he’s a comic strip character. Often that’s just an excuse to add a layer of funny to the violence, an easy way to fit a quip in and unless you’re playing with layers of reality and show more unreliable narrators it quickly becomes tedious.

Fortunately Duane Swierczynski’s interested in exactly that, which is the book’s saving grace. In all honesty aside from the playing with the concept of an unreliable narrator this book isn’t for me – I’m at the point where I find ultraviolence tedious and don’t particularly like the Jason Pearson’s scuzzed up artwork. Gore as a spectacle became tired a long time ago, particularly if you’ve watched a horror film in the last twenty years. Maybe I’ve been too immersed in culture but even the last few frames of the story weren’t particularly fresh (to pick an obvious antecedent: the Buffy episode ‘Normal Again’). Perhaps I’ve just been reading mainstream comics too long and even the ones which aim high don’t appeal now…. actually no, it’s probably just the quipping psychopathic antihero. Kudos to the writer for a brave attempt but in the end even a fondness for postmodernism can’t get me past the central character being an archetype of everything I least enjoy about comics. show less

I didn't know what to make of 'California Bear' at first. I was a little dazed by how bizarre it was. The tone was somewhere between Don Winslow and early Carl Hiaasen. The story, told from the point of view of four characters, each of whom was going through a major change in their lives and none of whom are at the centre of the personality bell curve, was intriguing and original. I could see that the intent was to satirise the True Crime industry. There was definitely crime but very little show more interest in truth.

We followed an ex-cop who got a killer's conviction overturned on a technicality so that he could get a cut of the compensation payout, we have the California Bear, a 'retired' serial killer who was never caught but who, in his old age, wants to be given credit for his 'work' and we have a Hollywood documentary producer who wants to make a big sale to the streaming companies but who says all the right words about justice and truth and respecting the victims.

Moslty, I liked the dark humour but I was uncomfortable with being in the Bear's head. He wasn't one of Hiaassen's larger-than-life- but-not-as-nasty-as-they-seem villains. He was a sadistic misogynist who still hungered for the rush of the kill. That didn't seem very funny to me.

I kept reading the book because I wanted to hear more from The Girl Detective. She's the tween daughter of the man whose murder conviction has just been overturned. She's smart, organised and passionate about doing the research to find out the truth about the murder her father was jailed for. She's also in hospital undergoing chemotherapy for an aggressive form of leukaemia that is likely to kill her. She lifted the book for me. She was brave, bright and had a dry sense of humour.

Then the tone of the book changed. It became less of a satire and more of a love-letter to the bravery of The Girl Detective. The California Bear transformed in interesting and unexpected ways. The women in the story came to the fore and started to subvert the agendas of the men around them. The Girl Detective started to put together what had happened and what was going to happen and did what she could to bring order to the chaos.

I was able to settle into the humour then. I had no idea where the story was going but I was happy to be along for the ride. I liked the fast pace of the story, the convoluted twists in the plot that linked everyone together in unpredictable ways and the unabashed confidence of the larger-than-life characters.

I was sad to get to the end of the book because I started to like some of the characters by then. The ending was neat and tidy and perhaps just a little to happily-ever-after but it was done with style and heart and it made me smile.

I recommend the audiobook version of 'California Bear'. It's done with multiple narrators and delivered with energy. I also recommend listening to the author's afterword where he explains how his own daughter's illness affected the novel. show less

One Kickass Crime Novel

I had to put down one of Stephen King's long-winded tales, as well as a Dean Koontz self-absorbed Oddity because I didn't want to stop reading "The Wheelman." I'll get back to those guys later, but for now I'm going to hunt down the next Swierczynski crime novel—way more fun.

The Wheelman, Lennon crashes his way through the bank's front doors only to suffer a highly imaginative menagerie of violence, betrayal and pursuit. For the mute getaway man everything goes show more wrong all the time, yet he survives . . . or does he? You gotta read this thing.

Mr. Swierczynski (try to type that 3 times fast) crafts one hell of a crime novel. More than a noir mystery, his bizarre twists are the stuff of nose bleeds. All done with gritty characters worth following in a fast paced style that grabs you by the eyeballs and won't let go. He initially reminded me of one of my all-time crime writing faves, Charlie Huston. Yet he's unique beyond comparison.

You really gotta read this thing! show less