286 pages
English language
Published Sept. 27, 2011 by Mulholland Books.
"The second of three high-energy thrillers arriving back-to-back from cult crime fiction sensation Duane Swierczynski. After barely walking away with his life from a shootout that will go down in Hollywood history, ex-cop Charlie Hardie discovers things can, in fact, get even worse. He is kidnapped by a team of team of undercover operatives and forced to stand guard over an underground prison that houses the most dangerous criminals on earth. Or so he's told. As Hardie goes deeper, and finds himself behind bars, he begins to wonder: who is running the asylum and are the good guys the ones behind bars or the ones walking the halls? But, Hardie knows that the world outside hasn't stopped and that his family is in peril as he languishes in this pseudo-prison. Soon, Hardie is plotting a desperate escape that will visit a Pandora's box of mayhem upon the state of California. …
"The second of three high-energy thrillers arriving back-to-back from cult crime fiction sensation Duane Swierczynski. After barely walking away with his life from a shootout that will go down in Hollywood history, ex-cop Charlie Hardie discovers things can, in fact, get even worse. He is kidnapped by a team of team of undercover operatives and forced to stand guard over an underground prison that houses the most dangerous criminals on earth. Or so he's told. As Hardie goes deeper, and finds himself behind bars, he begins to wonder: who is running the asylum and are the good guys the ones behind bars or the ones walking the halls? But, Hardie knows that the world outside hasn't stopped and that his family is in peril as he languishes in this pseudo-prison. Soon, Hardie is plotting a desperate escape that will visit a Pandora's box of mayhem upon the state of California. He'll make some new enemies. But he'll take care of many more. Because nobody does justice like Charlie Hardie. And if you threaten his family, you better believe there'll be hell to pay"--
"After barely walking away with his life from a shootout that will go down in Hollywood history, ex-cop Charlie Hardie discovers things can, in fact, get even worse. He is kidnapped by a team of team of undercover operatives and forced to stand guard over an underground prison that houses the most dangerous criminals on earth. Or so he's told. As Hardie goes deeper, and finds himself behind bars, he begins to wonder: who is running the asylum and are the good guys the ones behind bars or the ones walking the halls? But, Hardie knows that the world outside hasn't stopped and that his family is in peril as he languishes in this pseudo-prison. Soon, Hardie is plotting a desperate escape that will visit a Pandora's box of mayhem upon the state of California. He'll make some new enemies. But he'll take care of many more. Because nobody does justice like Charlie Hardie. And if you threaten his family, you better believe there'll be hell to pay"--
Finally on to new ground with the Charlie Hardie trilogy. This one wasn’t as slam-bang awesome as the first book, but it had some great characters, cool twists, and a bizarre setting in an underground prison where it isn’t clear who is an inmate and who is a guard. As these books continued, they just got weirder and weirder…
As with most sequels, this book was not that great. He chopped up the ending not to reveal much for the third book.
Hell & Gone by Duane Swierczynski - this is book 2 of the Charlie Hardie trilogy. In book 1, [b:Fun and Games|9583669|Fun and Games|Duane Swierczynski|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1297867711s/9583669.jpg|14470611], he stumbled across The Accident People, who specialize in "accidents" happening to folks that powerful people want to get rid of. He tried to protect a B level actress, but failed in the end. The ending of that book was a bloodbath, as Charlie thwarted another killing attempt, only to take a shot to the head.
Book 2 opens with Charlie getting carted away and then kidnapped by the very people he has been trying to destroy. And who have been trying to kill him. He is taken to some kind of prison facility and there must learn a whole new set of rules, as both guard and prisoner. He vows to escape and make The Industry pay.
This was a very strange book, especially …
Hell & Gone by Duane Swierczynski - this is book 2 of the Charlie Hardie trilogy. In book 1, [b:Fun and Games|9583669|Fun and Games|Duane Swierczynski|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1297867711s/9583669.jpg|14470611], he stumbled across The Accident People, who specialize in "accidents" happening to folks that powerful people want to get rid of. He tried to protect a B level actress, but failed in the end. The ending of that book was a bloodbath, as Charlie thwarted another killing attempt, only to take a shot to the head.
Book 2 opens with Charlie getting carted away and then kidnapped by the very people he has been trying to destroy. And who have been trying to kill him. He is taken to some kind of prison facility and there must learn a whole new set of rules, as both guard and prisoner. He vows to escape and make The Industry pay.
This was a very strange book, especially after the relatively straight forward thriller that was Fun & Games. Charlie spends the first third of the book in a nearly comatose state, getting carted around, beat up, shot up, electrocuted, drugged, and other bodily calamities. It is actually pretty painful to read, both with what is being done to him and what he is forced to witness being done to others. He uncovers some remarkable allies in this underground hellhole but ends up making a deal with the devil. Again.
I am not sure just how much I liked this one. Like I said, for at least the first third, not really much happened. Hardie is constantly dragged around, and while there is a little story going on outside of his trials and tribulations, even that doesn't have much going on. The middle third, where he discovers what he is up against, is really bizarre, a sort of Skinner Box experiment gone crazy, much like the infamous experiment in the 60s where people were told to turn up the juice on a subject, no matter how much they screamed, just to see how far they would go. And it was truly creepy how far most people would go when told to do it by an authority figure.
But even the ending, which, of course, explodes in a paroxysm of violence, is strangely unsatisfying. I'm not sure if it is because it is the middle book of a trilogy, but it just seemed to be a way through the story and not a story in and of itself. I'm hoping for better in the finale, [b:Point and Shoot|11645093|Point and Shoot|Duane Swierczynski|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327987236s/11645093.jpg|16589205], which they excerpt a little of the beginning. That's due out this month.
