LIT REVIEW: Duane Swierczynski's Hell & Gone

CP's former editor in chief grabs you by your collar and jolts you into a world where questionable torture tactics become mundane.

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LIT REVIEW: Duane Swierczynski's Hell & Gone

POSTED: Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 4:00 PM

Filed Under: Arts Books

Death is never an option for Charlie Hardie.

Known as the former cop who can survive anything the world can muster up, Hardie finally meets his match with the Accident People, a secret group that quietly captures and kills people across the nation. Simple enough.

But when Hardie is kidnapped and coerced into being the warden of an inescapable underground prison, everything becomes hard to grasp. Who really controls the facility? What crimes were the prisoners guilty of committing? Are the guards inherently evil? Is it worth attempting an escape when a death mechanism threatens the lives of everyone inside? Is there really no way out?

Crime thriller author/Philadelphia resident/former CP editor in chief Duane Swierczynski craftily refuses to give the reader the satisfaction of knowing who to believe, who to root for, and who is who. He grabs you by your collar and jolts you into a world where questionable torture tactics become mundane. Where control is only temporary and trust is nonexistent. Where you can rely on the implausible. Where everyone’s a prisoner.

Hell & Gone is the second installment of Swierczynski's three-part series. It takes your expectations, leads you on, then throws them out the window while laughing at you for being so presumptuous. The prose is colloquial, effortlessly sarcastic, and reads like an action movie. Multiple loose ends float throughout the book and are eventually tied together with expertise; different storylines and character relationships are seamlessly intertwined.

This tumultuous ride of surprise after surprise leaves the reader with pumping adrenaline and a constant state of anxiety for Hardie. No questions are answered without more questions popping up, and no page calls for skimming. Each character is as vivid and badass as the next, and the recklessness of the flawed but lovable protagonist propels the story at a breakneck pace.

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