Fun & Games
By Duane
Swierczynski
ISBN:
978-0-316-13328-9
A TP 2011 release
from Mulholland Books,
283 pages
Accurately titled, this
breathless thriller is a laugh a minute, a gunshot or an assault every other
minute, and an unerring logic that ties the whole thing together as tight as
can be and that will leave most readers smiling and satisfied.
Protagonist Charlie Hardie is an
itinerant house sitter. You go away for a time but you want somebody to keep
the castle from harm, you call Charlie. Turns out there are subterranean
reasons why Charlie does this all over the country and you’ll learn about them
in due time.
Charlie flies out to California
to house sit for a client who is overseas. Seems simple enough, but by the time
he gets to the house and discovers there are no keys waiting for him, things
begin to deteriorate in a swift and alarming way. Interestingly, every
character we meet in the early going seems to have a secret life, or at least
some serious secret they need to conceal from the rest of the world. This
profusion of secrets in the hands of a less skilled writer could easily be a
disaster. Fortunately this author is up to the challenge.
This novel is a violation. It
violates rules of good taste, of the genre and of good sense. It is not only
funny, it is a fun read. It is illogical and preposterous and contains more
than one or two coincidences that in other hand might cause a reader to abandon
the novel, but by the time they crop up, most readers will be thoroughly
hooked. This novel experience is enhanced by the apparent close collaboration
between author, editor and designer so that the look of the pages in many
instances helps highlight the point.
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