Hell and Gone (Charlie Hardie Trilogy 2) [Paperback]

If there is someone writing more original plots in high quality popular fiction today than Duane Swiercynski, please let me know who is are. I've been a fan of DS ever since The Driver. Some of his ideas work out better than others, but he is always the master of the unforeseen, but fitting, plot twist.

Hell and Gone is the second book in a series about an ex policeman named Charlie Hardie. The first book introduced us to Charlie as he withdraws from the world after getting his partner on the Philadelphia police department and his family killed by gangsters. In LA, Charlie stumbles into a young actress on the run from The Accident People, and there is about 350 pages of mayhem that ensues. The first book ends with a cliffhanger and Hell and Gone opens right where the first book left off.

I'm not going to spoil what happens in Hell and Gone. What I will say is that DS employs a 'couldn't see this coming in a million years' plot twist which involves Charlie being trapped in a facility where the dividing line between good guys and bad guys is very, very thin. This gives the book a claustrophobic atmosphere very reminiscent of Sartre's play, No Exit. Isolating the action to a small, cramped facility is a new twist for DS and he pulls it off very well. As with the first book, ~ 350 pages of mayhem occurs, and there is a plot twist at the end which is even more bizarre, and left me wishing the publication date of the final book in the series was RIGHT NOW and not March of 2012.

The only series close to what DS is doing here right now is the series by Charlie Huston that begins with Caught Stealing. That is a fine series by a very fine author who also has thought up some pretty bizarre plots, and I would recommend it to anyone. Not having read the unreleased Point and Shoot, I can't compare them completely, but both are very worthwhile for readers of contemporary crime fiction.

If you have not begun the Fun and Games/Hell and Gone/Point and Shoot series, you have a choice. Buy the frist two and then wait like me until the third comes out, or wait until March, buy all three, and withdraw from the world to read all three back to back. Or you can just skip the series, but if you do, you're missing out on one wild ride. Charlie is someone who will stay with you for a very long time.

I loved Fun and Games but found this follow-up to be tedious and implausible. The first book had richer characters (including Hardie's), more imaginative situations and and a far better payoff. DS gets stuck in his underground prison and never really emerges. I stopped caring by page 100.

I read the first book in the Charlie Hardie trilogy, Fun and Games, back in the spring and it wound up becoming my favorite book of the year so far. While I've been fortunate to read a lot of great books this year, Fun and Games easily remains in my top three and I wouldn't be surprised to see it stay there. But what about its sequel, Hell and Gone? After a powder keg of a debut, I had to wonder just how in the hell Hell and Gone would be able to make par, let alone surpass, the first book. Now, if you haven't read Fun and Games yet, stop reading this right now and go find a copy, because I'm about to spoil the ending of the first book.

Hell and Gone picks up almost immediately after the crazy shootout at the end of Fun and Games. Charlie Hardie is beat up, broken down, shot, and handcuffed to the gorgeous woman who tried really hard to have him killed. Law enforcement and paramedics arrive, separate the two, and whisk Charlie off in an ambulance. But before he knows what's happening, he's drugged and whisked off to a secret location, only to get drugged again and taken to an even more secret location. Eventually he's awakened and finds himself in a room with Mann, the woman who tried to kill him, the woman working for a secret organization of assassins called "The Accident People" (if you've listened to the diatribes Randy Quaid has spewed for the last year or two about celebrity killers, in his efforts to evade U.S. authorities, then you know the type I'm referring to).

So, Charlie wakes up with no idea how long he's been unconscious, or why he's even still alive. Mann confronts him and tells him he's been conscripted, in a sense, to work for the same organization she works for. Turns out he's sent way underground to a super-secret security facility known as Site 7734. Seem like a peculiar name for an underground prison? Well, punch those numbers into a calculator and turn the calculator upside-down. Do you get the significance now? Yeah, not exactly idyllic conditions.

It's at this point where the story really goes down the rabbit hole--literally if you think about it. Where Fun and Games was a high-octane shoot-'em-up through the Hollywood Hills, Hell and Gone felt closer to a psychological thriller akin to The Prisoner. The only thing missing was a giant amorphous bubble chasing Charlie down when he tried to escape. There's an intriguing, albeit convoluted, subplot involving one of his fellow inmates, but the main focus of this book had Charlie trying to figure out where he was and how to get out in order to exact his revenge and save his family. But at every turn a monkey wrench is thrown into the gears of his surroundings and it becomes a game of simple survival.

The action and suspense is as palpable and hot-to-the-touch as I expected, but it was the setting and focus of the story that really threw me. I will heartily give Duane Swierczynski all the credit in the word for using rocket fuel where other authors might use gasoline to propel his books forward, but the Kafka-ish underground prison was about the last place on Earth I expected Charlie Hardie to wind up. And what's even crazier is where Charlie winds up at the end of the book. I can't even wrap my head around that plot twist.

In one sense I was disappointed with Hell and Gone because it didn't go where I expected it to go after Fun and Games. Conventional thinking on my part, I suppose. So in another sense, I have to tip my hat to Swierczynski for taking a Gatling gun to my preconceived notions. At this point, I have no idea what to expect when the third book comes out in 2012. I just know that I am on board Charlie Hardie's insane bandwagon and can't wait to read Point and Shoot.