Customer Reviews

Severance Package

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Fans of hard-boiled mysteries have witnessed a rebirth of the genre in recent years. Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime has introduced a new generation of readers to the long-forgotten works of pulp masters, as well as to exciting new writers such as himself and Christa Faust.

At the same time a new generation of excellent writers has reinvigorated the noir genre. Ken Bruen, Jason Starr and Megan Abbott have established themselves as mystery writers we will be enjoying for decades to come. Now add to the list Duane Swierczynski, former editor-in-chief of the Philadelphia City Paper. SEVERANCE PACKAGE is his fourth novel. And if you have not read him yet and you love mysteries and action, you are in for a treat. Swierczynski, like the above mentioned writers, is destined to become a hard-boiled master.

Swierczynski writes noir, but it's far from ordinary. This is noir on steroids, as his books are filled with nonstop action and mayhem. There is not a wasted word in his lean, adrenaline-driven prose. And nobody working the field today can build suspense as well. Read SEVERANCE PACKAGE and you will immediately want to seek out THE BLONDE, his novel from 2006 that was a unique modern reworking of the film noir classic DOA.

SEVERANCE PACKAGE starts with seven employees being called into a Saturday "managers' meeting" of Murphy, Knox and Associations, a somewhat mysterious "financial services" firm located on the 36th floor of a Philly skyscraper. It is a sweltering hot summer day, and the employees react the same way you would at having to get up, get dressed and go into work on a Saturday morning.

It gets worse. They are ushered into a conference room filled with cookies, three cartons of orange juice and four bottles of champagne. So far so good. Then their boss, David, tells them they are on "official lockdown." The phones don't work. Nobody can leave the building since the elevator has been fixed to bypass the floor, and the fire exits have been rigged with sarin gas bombs. Whoa!

They are then told they are being let go from both work and the planet. They have a choice: drink the champagne and orange juice, which is poisoned and will kill them in seconds, or be shot in the head. It turns out that the company is some sort of super secret rogue CIA-type outfit set up to disrupt the bank accounts of terrorists or just about anybody else they feel like messing with. And now the operation is being terminated, so to speak.

This is why noir is great fun. You might think you have a lot of bad days at work. Not like this.

The firm's second-in-command, Molly, then pulls a coup by shooting David in the head, and we are off to the races. It seems the entire 36th floor has cameras all over the place, and Molly is under the impression that she is auditioning for a new job in the super-secret spy agency. And, indeed, events on the floor are being monitored by two mysterious fellows in Edinburgh, Scotland, 3,500 miles away. Who are they?

Swierczynski has propelled us into a noir nightmare where nothing is what it seems and everybody is trapped in hell. Of the seven employees, only one is not a spy or covert op of some sort and is truly innocent. This PR man, Jamie DeBroux, is a former newspaper writer who needed this boring job to support his new child. The writer, in other words, as gullible dupe. There's a twist. Jamie is about to be seriously messed with.

Swierczynski's greatest creation here is Molly, a red-headed killing and torture machine who is so bad she is good. All the current summer crop of cinema fictional superheroes, including Batman himself, would run and hide under the bed if they ever met Molly. Think of Linda Fiorentino from The Last Seduction and imagine her being a million times more ruthless and violent. That's Molly.

But Molly, who may not be who she claims either, has a soft side. She is, after all, trying to provide for her ailing mother and ventures to the dark side out of unrequited love and a desire never to be a victim again. She's nuts, but a hell of a woman.

And she never loses control. Nor will she ever give up. But still, she finds time in the middle of a small war to stop and fix her hair. "The pain didn't matter though. Her appearance did," Swierczynski writes. After all, on job interviews: "A battered face would not impress her employers." You should not root for her, but you do. Molly is the ultimate guilty pleasure.

SEVERANCE PACKAGE is not for the squeamish. People are hung upside down out of 36th story windows. Others get sarin gas blasts to the face. Some suffer bullets to the head and other body parts or are attacked with razor blades, pix axes, saps, you name it. The blood flows. And yet, somehow the strongest manage to survive and fight on, at least for awhile. If you like action, you will love this book. It is a wild ride but also a fun read that keeps pages flying past.

Swierczynski is great at keeping the suspense building to a boil. Readers have no idea how this story will end. It is not clichéd. And in true noir fashion, he provides twists galore that will keep you guessing even beyond the last page. In his nightmare world, people fight and die, even if they don't know exactly why or for whom. Few are truly innocent, and heaven help those who are.

Noir was born in a time of uncertainly in the mid-20th century. Now we live in another uncertain time in a new century and noir is back, thrilling us with its bleak vision. Swierczynski is one of the up-and-coming stars of the mystery world. Go out and read all his books as soon as possible. You will not be disappointed.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

If there's one thing you are guaranteed of when reading Duane Swierczynski is that the characters will be quirky, the plots unabashedly over the top, and the book undeniably entertaining. The Wheelman and The Blonde were absolutely terrific romps in Duane's typical noirish style, and while Severance Package starts off interestingly, it steadily rides a downslope flightpath before augering in for an unsatisfying finish that leaves the reader feeling that Duane merely phoned this one in after envisioning just a single scene. Normally Duane is attentive to detail which lends a certain verisimilitude to the plot and helps keep the elastic of disbelief stretched to just this side of its physiologic limits. But pieces like "...Nichole had misjudged the chop. And she had, kind of, accidentally, sent fragments of bone into her best friend's brain" are just markers of lazy writing; displays that Duane's mind was on autopilot and that he chose not to create a scene but rather to perch it precariously upon a myth as hoary as one-breasted Amazons. Other scenes are fired off at machine-gun rate with details ignored such as one character running to the side of another who looks to be dead only to have in the next paragraph the character run over to the fallen comrade's side (again) in order to check for a pulse. Or the villainess who "bench-presses" a guard down a stairwell; Duane would do well to peruse an exercise manual at least once before describing physical actions. Perhaps some knowledge of weapons would benefit him, too: an HK-MP5 9mm on full auto doesn't have enough kick to knock someone off balance, let alone an automatic pistol which apparently is enough to knock Nichole over. Even the villainess becomes over-inflated with a Wal-Mart of MacGyver gear stored (we're supposed to believe) in bracelets around her wrists, the ability to fireman carry over 400 pounds, and Kerri Strug her way down 20+ flights of stairs. These are but examples culled from a myriad of irritating distractions (including the occasional disregard for physics)that takes the reader out of the story and turns the work more into a piece worthy of Mel Brooks or an adaptation of a Leslie Nielsen movie.

Where Duane completely shuts his mind off and races full-speed ahead on the road of inanity occurs in the last third of the book. It's at this point that he sees himself as an amateur Dario Argento cum Michael Davis, and instead of writing tries to direct a violent orgy of unnecessary gore and gunplay. So focused is he on shocking that he doesn't allow for plot resolutions (we never find out the who or, more importantly, the WHY of the meeting and the termination orders) and ultimately decides that the inanity has gone on long enough and wraps it all up with most banal, absurd, and, well, STUPID, endings this side of a Vince Flynn novel.

Don't let reviews that mention Tarantino lull you into a false sense about the quality of this nightmare. These are people who don't actualy GET Tarantino, they merely think that random excessive violence and improbable situations is what defines him. Duane may be aiming with this book to achieve such a high acclaim, unfortunately his sights are so far off target that his reputation as a capable writer suffers as collateral damage.

I'm hoping this is a temporary hiccup in Duane's resume. But given this book and his recent unremarkable work on Marvel Comics' "Cable" comic book, I fear that the best may be far behind him.

The world has been waiting (well, MY world anyway) for Duane Swierczynski's follow-up to the 2006 standout The Blonde for a long damn time, and it's finally here, in the form of Severance Package. Was it worth the wait?

Oh, yeah.

Severance Package is a rocket-fueled story of spy vs. spy, and then some, spanning continents as well as consciousness.

It opens with a fairly incidental death by potato salad. Really good, we're told, potato salad. From that point, the story gets unusual.

Right away we are thrust into the world of Murphy & Knox, a financial consultation firm run by one David Murphy. He's called a meeting for Saturday morning. As you can learn from the book flap, Murphy then informs his underlings that the company is, in fact, a front for an intelligence operation, and due to circumstances, it's become necessary for them all to die. He's been kind enough to provide Big Sleep-y time mimosas, or take a bullet in the head. Very considerate.

What Swierczynski has done here, with amazing skill, is create a multi-focused narrative of terror and laughs. The violence is by turns stunning and hilarious, the characters become our friends and we feel for every single one of them as they take their various routes to, well, wherever. It's these characterizations that elevates Severance Package beyond what it could have easily been--a set-piece extravaganza designed for commerce. Even the secondary characters are fully-formed, giving full weight to the proceedings.

If there's a nominal hero, it's Jamie DeBroux, the writer of the group. (Hmm.) He's our everyman, deposited by a playful God into some kind of apocalypse, when all he wants to do is get home to his family. Swierczynski has done a great job of letting us share his view, filtered by shock, then fear, then a comic determination, of the world exploding around him.

But Severance Package is RULED by Molly Lewis. Assistant to David Murphy, she promptly turns the operation on its axis, and from that point, becomes a character of such grit and playful brutality that you'll find yourself becoming her cheerleader. Her action scenes in Severance Package are as entertaining as you will find in a thriller this year. Swierczynski does an amazing job of giving us a visual field of events, as well as keeping up the funny. Needless to say, Severance Package would make one outrageous movie, but they can't really duplicate the outsized dynamics that Duane Swierczynski creates with the voice of his own narrative.

There is stuff in this book that I SO MUCH want to talk about, but I can't, so just dive in and bring your freakin' kevlar!!

Yeah, definitely worth the wait.

A fun read loaded with clever cynicism, wit and sarcasm ... and (if I'm correct) a subtle reference an Al Guthrie character (a 3 legged dog one guy spots in Edinburgh)(?) ... fun stuff. The author has a wonderful way of interweaving popular culture (past and present) and even the jabs at the political right, aside from being deserved, are entertaining (this coming from a certified hawk).

I liked this one slightly less than The Blonde (thus the 4 stars instead of 5) but The Blonde may well be a classic.

I know one son of mine will enjoy this one very much as well.

"His name was Paul Lewis and he didn't know he had seven minutes to live." With that, the gates fly open and "Severence Package" is off and running. Within pages, we're treated to a death by potato salad. Then, the last words a dying man hears from his wife is, "Well, this is ahead of schedule." And that's just the first six pages.

Whoa, Nelly!

Nearly all the action in this book happens on the 37th floor of an office building in downtown Philadelphia and it happens over a period of about four hours. That's also about the time it takes to read the book. I read it in one sitting on a Sunday afternoon.

This noir at its pulpiest. Or maybe pulp at its noirist. Other writers here have summarized the plot, so I won't bother. But realize up front that you have to suspend an elephant-sized amount of disbelief. Feats are performed that are hardly humanly possible. People survive despite incredible amounts of damage being inflicted on them. There is torture, mutilation, amputation and a guy gets a cookie crumbled into his mouth (very funny scene).

Want characterization? Don't bother. Want emotion? There's only one -- rage. Want cold, hard logic? Not here.

Want over the top action? In spades. Some posters have compared this to the movie "Three Days of the Condor." Not so much. Think more the machine-gun-leg part of "Planet Terror." But less tasteful.

Then there's Molly Lewis. She's one thing with a gun. Another with an Exacta knife. And still more with the unscrewed cutting arm of a paper trimmer.

And I'm not even going into the woman who pulls the trigger of a gun with her tongue because she can't use her hands.

Terrific cover and b&w illustrations inside.

And any author with a redneck first name and a Polish last name is OK in my book.

Oh Duane, Duane, Duane. You are such a twisted boy. -grin-

***** This review contains some spoilers. *****

Severance Package starts out with a nice little murder and picks up speed from there on.
When seven employees are told they actually work for a secret government office and that they are being shut down, their day only gets interesting from there. The boss has decided that to save face he must kill them all and commit suicide. The employees object.
We readers are then subjected to a fast-paced story of violent, gruesome and very creative death scenes.

It's all so much fun! Come now, haven't you secretly imagined doing in that certain supervisor or annoying employee? With Severance Package, you can do all that and more! In your imagination that is!

Severance Package is a rocking story that breaks the rules at high speed. Then it slaps you in the face with gory and gleeful fun!

I would highly recommend this to anyone that enjoys action packed stories. You'll be laughing out loud, if you have a sense of humor like mine, while being awed by the imagination of the author. Or maybe we should be worried about the author. I know I would be if I worked with him! -grin-

This is a one-note book and that one note is violence.

Part of the problem I had with it is that the book in no way matches the cover. I love the black humor of the cover -- "Ever want to kill your boss? Well guess what, the feeling is mutual." -- but that sense of humor doesn't ever show up in the book. There were occasional flashes, but they were between characters peripheral to the main plot and even so they weren't enough to deliver on the cover's promise. I was expecting something much more clever than what I got.

Make no mistake, Swierczynski's writing is tight. I've got no issue with his ability to put together sentences and paragraphs. My problem is with his ability to put together characters. None of these characters are appealing. None of them make you feel any great emotion. By page 50 or so, I would have been perfectly happy if the whole building had exploded. By page 100, I wanted to go in and set the bombs myself.

The setup is terrific. Bring the office staff in on a Saturday, sit them down in a conference room, lock and booby trap all of the exits, and tell them they are to be "eliminated." As expected, complete bedlam erupts. Duane Swierczynski's latest is another madcap treat to the limits of imagination. Once he introduces the characters and locks the doors its like a kid turned loose on the playground for recess. Swierczynski runs wild and there's no telling what is going to happen next.

This book was a lot of fun to read and probably a lot of fun to write. No, it won't win any awards and it's not fine literature. There are lots of holes in the plot and sometimes the story falters due to uneven details, but you shouldn't be overly concerned with these minor problems anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed Severance Package, almost as much as The Blonde and The Wheelman, and I will definitely read whatever he comes up with next.

Duane Swierczynski has developed an outrageously breakneck pacing of his novels that almost compel the reader to turn pages as quickly as possible to avoid putting the book down. As he did with "The Blond", "Severance Package" starts with a bang and then relentlessly pulls the reader into a nightmarish rollercoaster ride that at times leaves one gripping the book to keep from setting it down.

"Severance Package" begins with 7 employees of a financial institution being called into work unusally on a Saturday to meet with boss, David Murphy. Some are shocked to discover that they are part of a top secret organization that has been ordered to shut down and each of them must die as a part of the closure. The entire 36th floor of the building has been rigged to prevent escape and the employees, some who are not who they seem to be, are told to choose suicide by poison or death by a bullet to the head.

After the initial disbelief, the wild sometimes over-the-top action begins as chaos and panic set in and everyone begins fighting for his/her life. The novel indeed reads like a screen play with distinct action scenes occurring on a regular basis and the whole thing reading like a movie running in the reader's head.

Yes, there is considerable reason to suspend disbelief at times but that is OK because this is the type of book that requires the reader to enjoy the ride more than the scenery. Sure, there are some outrageous scenes which defy logic and physicality from a small female but so what if the ride is as compelling and satisfying as it was for this reader.

I was more disappointed in the characerizations developed in this novel--or lack thereof. Few characters were fleshed out, and even Jamie, Swierczynski's Everyman in this story, is not an overly sympathetic character who we should care deeply about.

No, this book is about the motivation and the wild relentless ride that forces each of us to imagine what we might do to escape a similar circumstance--trapped at the top of a highrise with killer(s)determined to destroy every living being and with elevators and stairways closed off. It is a "Die Hard" meets a seemingly indestructible killer scenario laced with competing covert agencies, double crosses, moles, incredible violence, and even a cockeyed love story thrown in the mix.

There are flaws in this book that I chose to submerge for the fun of the ride--of seeing how each new action or potential death scene might evolve. How will these desperate characters, some who are trained killers, interact to escape certain death? Will anyone survive, and if so, who will it be? The ultimate flaw is the ending which, while darkly comical, is incomprehensible and illogical. Still, I rate the book 4 stars simply for Swierczynski's ability to hold my interest and keep me guessing until the end.

This starts as a great fun read in the tradition of a Pulp Fiction or Sin City, or perhaps reaching back farther, the Most Dangerous Game. It has a cool setup with it's main characters locked in an office where they're to all be killed (for reasons that are never made clear). For more than half the book, the action proceeds in a fun if not overly plausible manner. But then things just go too far, Molly (the chick on the cover), turns into a Terminator like uber killing machine. We start spending too much time with the gay CI6 agents controlling the action (or are they). And the battles between the victims become way too predictable.

A shame really, because it really starts out so cool.