Expiration Date [Paperback]

Duane Swierczynski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2010

In this neighborhood, make a wrong turn…

 … and you’re history.

 Mickey Wade is a recently-unemployed journalist who lucked into a rent-free apartment—his sick grandfather’s place. The only problem: it’s in a lousy neighborhood—the one where Mickey grew up, in fact. The one he was so desperate to escape.

 But now he’s back. Dead broke. And just when he thinks he’s reached rock bottom, Mickey wakes up in the past. Literally.

 At first he thinks it’s a dream. All of the stores he remembered from his childhood, the cars, the rumble of the elevated train. But as he digs deeper into the past, searching for answers about the grandfather he hardly knows, Mickey meets the twelve-year-old kid who lives in the apartment below.

 The kid who will grow up to someday murder Mickey’s father.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Swierczynski (Severance Package, 2007) originally planned to write this beguiling, pulp-style mix of fantasy and mystery as a magazine serial, but when the New York Times Magazine bowed out of the fiction business, he turned it into a stand-alone novel. Mickey Wade, an unemployed journalist, moves into his grandfather’s apartment in the family’s old Philadelphia neighborhood and, after gobbling a few aspirin to fight a hangover, finds himself beamed back to the day of his birth in 1972. Turns out those weren’t your garden-variety aspirin but, rather, the pills a crackpot scientist had created as part of a government-funded plan to investigate out-of-body travel. Only, in Mickey’s case, he can only go back to the early 1970s. But there’s plenty to do there: if he can somehow divert the young boy who will eventually murder Mickey’s father, he can change his family’s history. Swierczynski cleverly melds the thriller and fantasy elements (especially the notion of nonlinear time), producing a thoroughly readable, suspenseful romp that evokes John D. MacDonald’s pulp classic The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything. --Bill Ott

Review

"Duane Swierczynski continues to carve out his own unique literary presence in a fascinating fusion of mystery, suspense, and sophisticated dark fantasy fiction.  Expiration Date is a skillful, fast-paced, rock'em, jolt'em, spook'em, leave-em-laughin' story with believable characters and a pedal to the floor narrative drive.  Top of the line entertainment."--Tom Piccirilli, author of Shadow Season

“Duane Swierczynski is one of the best thriller writers in America, and probably my favorite. I blazed through Expiration Date in one sitting and I loved it.” -- James Frey, New York Times bestselling author of Bright Shiny Morning and A Million Little Pieces

Praise for Severance Package:

"[A] kinetic story, which never stops moving...turbocharged entertainment." --Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times

"Swierczynski writes a brand of thriller whose pacing forces us to reexamine our casual use of the word breakneck...This is essentially one long action scene that begs for the next Tarantino to direct. But if that sounds like faint praise, it isn't: there are both enough cliché killers and comedy to make us raise two thumbs up. If you want your thrillers to be, well, thrilling, pop a big bowl of corn--you won't leave your seat until the end."--Booklist

"The best word to describe Swierczynski's latest thriller is frenetic, and even that is likely an understatement." --Library Journal

"Fans of crime fiction will find Swierczynski's latest offering to be a guilty pleasure of unparalleled magnitude. With pedal-to-the-metal pacing, characters who appear to be meek cubicle dwellers a la 'Office Space' but are really cold-blooded, black-ops killers, and enough gut-churning violence to make a Quentin Tarantino movie look like a Disney musical replete with singing candlesticks and teapots, the dark, twisted energy in this novel is palpable." --The Chicago Tribune
“A hot shot of adrenaline straight to the neural plexus.” –Joe Schreiber, author of Chasing the Dead and Eat the Dark

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 245 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (March 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312363400
• ISBN-13: 978-0312363406
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Duane Swierczynski is the author of several crime thrillers, including SEVERANCE PACKAGE (St. Martin's Press), which has been optioned by Lionsgate films. He also writes the X-Men spinoff CABLE for Marvel Comics as well as IMMORTAL IRON FIST. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars His best yet, March 30, 2010

By 

Dave (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Expiration Date (Paperback)

If you haven't heard of Duane Swierczynski, you're in for a treat. This guy's one of the best writers I've read in years.

It's not straight up pulp noir, no, it's better than that. Pulp noir with a sci-fi/fantasy twist. Expiration Date is the story of a down on his luck guy who happens upon a means of going back in time, and then happens upon his father's murderer. The story is one of the few time travel stories I've ever read that doesn't fall into a time travel plot hole.

You will find this book especially entertaining if you're from Philadelphia. The gritty detail brings some familiar locales to life.

Get it, read it, love it, and then check out his other books: The Blonde, The Wheelman, Severance Package, or Secret Dead Men.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars couldn't put it down!, April 14, 2010

By 

Katharine Horsley "Kate" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Expiration Date (Paperback)

I've been a huge fan of Swierczynski since reading SECRET DEAD MEN and THE BLONDE. He's a writer who gives you something new and surprising with every book. Things I especially loved about EXPIRATION DATE were the feeling of childhood nostalgia and the vivid sense of time and place. The artwork by 2000 AD and Marvel artist Laurence Campbell was an added joy!

The opening sentences are a great hook into this story:

"See that body sprawled on the hardwood floor, marinating in a pool of his own blood?

"That's me."

After getting that far, I couldn't put the book down. And my high expectations weren't disappointed with this original - and often touching - thriller about a down-on-his-luck journalist, Mickey Wade, who takes four Tylenol and travels back in time. Trapped in a wraithlike and disempowered state, Mickey must unravel a murder mystery from the past. Cue twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.

Another reviewer has compared Swierczynski to Charles Bukowski - a great way of describing his supremely readable prose, which combines human warmth with unpredictable quirkiness. I've been on a Swierczynski jag since I picked up THE BLONDE and I highly recommend this particular brand of awesome noir kool-aid. If you're already a fan, pick up EXPIRATION DATE for your next fix. And if you've not discovered him yet, just buy the bunch and treat yourself!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun but average time travel adventure, May 6, 2010

By 

Stephen Dobie (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Expiration Date (Paperback)

Mickey Wade loses his job as a journalist and moves into his grandfather's unoccupied apartment in a run down section of Philadelphia. He takes some pills that he thinks are Tylenol, but which end up transporting his spirit back into the 1970's. Once he figures out the connection with the pills, Mickey starts to make repeated trips into the past, and starts to learn more about his family history and the murder of his father. His spirit can only interact with the world in limited ways, but Mickey starts looking for a way to save his father.

This is a good story with a number of twists, but it never really pulled me in. The story never really built up much suspense, and most of the interesting revelations are crammed into the end of the book. I didn't care that much for the character of Mickey so I wasn't too concerned about what happened to him. Expiration Date is interesting for a slightly different look at time travel, but not a must-read.