Hell & Gone

Charlie Hardie #2

by Duane Swierczynski

The second of three high-energy thrillers arriving back-to-back from cult crime fiction sensation Duane Swierczynski.

Left for dead after an epic shootout that blew the lid off a billion-dollar conspiracy, ex-cop Charlie Hardie quickly realizes that when you're dealing with The Accident People, things can get worse. Drugged, bound and transported by strange operatives of unknown origin, Hardie awakens to find himself captive in a secret prison that houses the most dangerous criminals on earth.

And then things get really bad. Because this isn't just any prison. It's a Kafkaesque nightmare that comes springloaded with a brutal catch-22: Hardie's the warden. And any attempt to escape triggers a "death mechanism" that will kill everyone down here -- including a group of innocent guards. Faced with an unworkable paradox, and knowing that his wife and son could be next on the Accident People's hit list, Hardie has only one choice: fight his way to the heart of this hell hole and make a deal with the Devil himself.

Genres: Thriller, Crime, Fiction, Mystery, Noir, Mystery Thriller, Ebooks

282 pages, Trade Paperback

First published October 27, 2011

About the author

Duane Swierczynski is an American crime writer who has written a number of non-fiction books, novels and also writes for comic books.

Reviews

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duane Swierczynski has ideas so brilliant and brutal that one day the rest of us will have to tool up and kill him. - Warren Ellis

Swierczynski seems to be making the transition from cult favorite to getting more main stream attention, so Ellis will probably try to make good on this threat in the near future. Since I’m enjoying the hell out of his work, I am volunteering my services as a bodyguard. What I lack in training, experience and competence, I make up for in my utter willingness to pepper spray absolutely anyone (including small children and the elderly) who’d give Mr. Swierczynski any grief.

Hell and Gone is the second part of a trilogy. In the first book, Fun and Games, ex-cop Charlie Hardie is a house sitting drunk who has a very bad encounter with the Accident People. The AP’s are a branch of a Vast Conspiracy that does a variety of nefarious things, and their specialty is the elimination of high profile targets like politicians or celebrities via untraceable ‘accidents’. Charlie threw a monkey wrench into one of their operations in L.A. but didn’t manage to escape so he figured he’d be dead in about 12 seconds.

But instead of killing him, Charlie is given a weird job offer. The Vast Conspiracy decides to make him the warden of a secret prison instead. With no other options, Charlie plays along hoping to find a way to escape. Unfortunately, the prison is a decaying underground complex at an unknown location that would make a pretty good setting for a video game. The handful of inmates are extremely dangerous and require a Hannibal Lector level of security, and the guards are only slightly more trustworthy than the prisoners. And the special sauce on this shit sandwich is that if any one tries to get out through the original entrance, it’d trigger a ‘death mechanism’ that kills everyone in the prison.

Fun and Games was a fast-n-furious action novel with heaping helpings of ultra-violence and humor. Hell and Gone is less actiony and more of a mind fuck, but it’s still powered by it’s breakneck pace and the sheer awesome insanity of its plot. This is the literary equivalent of taping a bunch of bottle rockets together, lighting the fuses and then tossing them into the middle of your 4th of July barbecue. It’s chaos, but it’s entertaining as hell. And if Swierczynski did what I think he did at the end of this one, the final book is going to be even crazier.

Also, Swierczynski is one of the authors I got to meet at Bouchercon earlier this year, and he seemed like a very nice guy who patiently answered my questions about superheroes. I may even brave the latest DC continuity reboot and pick up his Birds of Prey comics which I’ve heard good things about.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hell and Gone an apt title, Hell for a place comparable to hell, and Gone as in gone of the Grid a ghost vanished. Think in the lines of a rendition a removal of a subject/person and gone as-well as dead. There is a lot out there that we don’t know about, Ghost planes and Ghost prisons to name a few, locations unknown to but of few pen pushing top executives. Charlie Hardie the man who is the best at guarding Homes possessions and people now finds himself in the tightest jam to date prison guarding,
but Where?
And Why?
And Who sent him there?
You going to have to read this novel to find out. Yet again an explosive story from the likes of Duane Swierczynski the author. I loved the first Hardie installment, Fun and Games and this is another treat of a story intricate plotted and cleverly put together in the most interesting locations yet. We have all heard of Alcatraz, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons. There are psychological experiments out there that studied the way humans behave in captivity and how power control shifts amongst prisoners and prison staff. Someone is pressing the buttons in this prison that Charlie Hardie finds himself in and playing one against another.
The problem with these hard ass guys like Charlie is that they have baggage, strings attached a weak spot, with family in the balance he is going to have to tread carefully.

Check out thefirst and third installments, all great thrillers.

Review also here

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you read the first book in the Charlie Hardie trilogy, Fun & Games , and think you know the way this series is going to continue, trust me, you have no idea.

Hell & Gone takes our favorite ex-cop-turned-house-sitter Charlie Hardie deeper into another level of the conspiracy that he found himself violently thrust into in the first novel, where he'll be challenged even more than before. It's pretty cool that this sequel feels completely different than it's predecessor, but yet totally fits. Swierczynski is one of the best writers of pure thriller out there, and like all of the great thriller writers, takes the most ridiculous of concepts and makes something really entertaining. All the craziness never felt forced to me or out of place. He kept throwing out so many creative and unexpected twists that I just gave up on trying to figure everything out and just went along for the ride. Especially after the final scene, I can't wait to see where the final book takes us.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I blame erotica. My natural response is to proceed with a whips and chains and between-the-pages sexual binge until this burning desire extricates itself from my system, and the world turns itself right-side up. What does that have to do with HELL AND GONE? Probably not a whole hell of a lot. But here we are you and I. With that being said, I cannot be held accountable for my actions during this review.

Fun And Games had Mann in all of her infinite glory, with her nipples sticking straight up in the air, sunbathing topless on a deck in the middle of LA. But Mann has been relegated to cameo status in the sequel, and I couldn’t help the heartfelt sigh that escaped my lips. Now we have Eve Bell who can maintain the lotus position for hours on end, and I’m intrigued all over again. Her shower scene certainly captured my attention. I’ll say it right now: I have no shame.

Unkillable Charlie Hardie once again was forced to question his very sanity, spending his days in an inescapable prison with a team of guards and prisoners that proved to be some of the baddest dudes and dudettes around. The adrenaline rush proceeded at an IV pace (my finger pushing the magic button every three minutes or so), and I couldn’t avoid the post-nasal drip, the chlorine beach, the white tile, the blue scrubs, or the shower curtain divider that separated me from the guy on the respirator.

The other characters, while interesting and intriguing, didn’t capture my attention the way the secondary cast of characters popped into my brain and executed the mambo in the first installment. The action scenes, while intense and electrified, held back a bit compared to the first go round and the insanity that is LA. But don’t get me wrong, this was one hell of a ride, and I’ll be seeking out the explosive finale with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation. I may need to sleep with the lights on, and my head buried underneath the covers, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. That’s what I’ll keep telling myself anyway, repeating the mantra until it’s permanently etched in my brain.

Cross-posted at Robert's Reads

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picking up directly after the events of Fun and Games, we find Charlie Hardie in the clutches of The Industry or The Accident People or Secret America, or whatever you want to call them. While Hardie's former colleague is on the lookout for him, finding him proves difficult. "They" don't screw around when they have a task to accomplish and burying the whereabouts of Hardie is their number one objective.

Upon awakening, Hardie finds himself deep underground in a prison somewhere on Earth. I know that's a little vague but Hardie knows next to nothing about where he is, what day it is or even what the time is so he's more than slightly lost. Charged with the task of running the prison as Warden, Charlie is responsible for detaining prisoners with backgrounds so devious, neither himself nor his staff are to be told why they're there. The punishment for not playing along? His family's safety is on the line.

I'm really digging this series although I have to admit, it took me a while to really get behind this book. I feel like Sweirczynski had a lot to live up to after the events of Fun and Games and while it took a bit to get going, he finished very, very strong. A few of the confrontations near the end came across as both intense and hilarious, especially his dialogue with Abrams .

I seriously have no idea where Swierczynski is going from here. The final pages present a scenario so ridiculous that I can't help but be interested. It's unfortunate that there appears to be a delay in it's release but I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on it.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know why so many people came to my funeral?
They wanted to make sure I was dead.
- Larry Tucker, Shock Corridor

Charlie Hardie should have been dead and buried early in the first novel of the series. He's a stubborn guy and refused to comply, so the author continues to pile up the odds against his chosen protagonist in a veritable avalanche of troubles and pissed-off bad guys. I wish Bruce Willis was twenty years younger so he could play in the movie adaptation of these books. I also believe these movies could be as good as the original three Die Hard movies in terms of tension and snarky humour.

Hardie couldn't help but wonder why life kept putting naked ladies in his path.

These ladies come accompanied by guns and goons, so Hardie has little chance to enjoy their charms. Like John McClane, Charlie Hardie is a tough cop who is separated from his wife and son, in this case in an effort to protect them against reprisals from Albanian Mafia. In the first book of the series, Hardie gets on the wrong side of a secret organization that specializes in terminating high-profile targets in carefully coreographed 'accidents'. The second book starts seconds after the bloodbath ending of the first one, as a bullet-ridden Hardie is captured by these conspirators.

Without going into more spoilerish details, Hardie is drugged, operated on and sent to Hell: a secret underground facility reputed to be escape-proof. It appears that his captors have a use for his killing talents and want to recoup their loses incurred in the first novel. The plot could have developed into a standard, unoriginal prison-break story, but Swierczynski hits on a novelty angle: a psychological game of cat and mouse in which the wardens become the prisoners and vice-versa. It's an extrapolation and continuation of a famous psychological study that raised numerous ethical questions - the July 1961 Milgram experiment. The autor shows that he got not only the details right, but also the multiple implications and damaging effects on the sanity of the participants.

The style of presentation is consistent with what I have come to expect from Swierczynski - breakneck speed, andrenaline rush, staccato dialogue, lots of cussing and explicit violence. Among the new authors in the field, he is surely one to watch out for and expect high quality thrillers in the future. What sets him apart from the crowd for me is his self-awareness and his open embracing of the sources of inspiration in popular action movies, his ironic treatment of the bloody set-up, his nods to the authors and filmmakers that opened the path for him:

Hardie knew that he was doing a slow-motion version of all those insane get-back-in-shape, get-armed, build-weapons, plant-traps, don-the-body-armor, smear-war-paint-on-your-face montages from countless movies, the most egregious of which were, of course, from the 'Rocky' movies, in which you could go form flabby palooka to mean lean hunting machine in as long as it took for the 1980s pop song to play itself out. What ordinarily took years could play out in a matter of verse-chorus, verse-chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus.

The first novel in the series ended in a huge cliffhanger, and the second one picked up the thread and raised the stakes to a higher level. The end of this one gets Hardie higher that any of you thought possible ( he is launched up in orbit around earth in a one man-module that he really can't escape from ), so I have high hopes from the next installment.

[Cathy DuPont · Rating 2 out of 5]

H&G is book number two in the trilogy of the Charlie Hardie series by Duane Swierczynski who I had never heard of until recently. DS is quite an interesting guy...comic book creator, writer for Marvel comics and magazine editor among other things.

My GR friends "harped" (in a good way) that I must read him so I did and book one, just blew me away. Fast reading and fast paced, and a solid four stars teetering towards five. I'm chintzy with five stars, ask my good friend Jackson Burnett GR author and reviewer who wrote The Past Never Ends...which was great, by the way. (Read it, you'll like it!) Jackson knows I'm chintzy with the magical five.

This one, book number two, I didn't like so much. It was ok but wasn't one of those books which I love...hating to put it down and hurrying to pick it back up to continue reading. That's one reason it took more than two days to finish.

Three-quarters of the book was set in a strange ass prison. Not your 'run of the mill' kindof prison. Never had any personal prison experience but prison life here just seemed repetitious and a bit boring. (Guess it is that...but who wants to hear the same, same for a book?)

Maybe not boring for Charlie Hardie, I guess, but there seemed to be some sci-fi and/or fantasy elements but not sure because I don't read much of either genre. It just didn't seem to be much of a mystery and/or thriller to me...and noir, not much of that either in my mind. (Couldn't say the same for the first in the series, Fun & Games. Noir and mystery, for sure.)

Glad it's finished finally, so I can get to the last one in the trilogy which will I will begin shortly. Sure hope it winds up with a bang...time invested and such. If not, so be it. I'm not embarrassed to put books down any longer. Life's too short to read a book I'm not enjoying. My new (old) mantra.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you didn't jump whole heartedly in to the insanity of the first Charlie Hardie thriller then you may be forgiven for thinking that Duane Swierczynski well and truly jumped the shark with this middle entry in his trilogy. That's before I even mention the stunt he pulls in the denouement to set up the otherwise wholly unbelievable third instalment.

Last year Hard Case Crime published The Twenty Year Death an epic novel in three parts from Ariel S. Winter, each section was in partial homage to a different style of classic noir fiction and just as I was wondering just what the hell had happened to the fast paced adrenaline fuelled thrill ride of Fun & Games I was reminded of it. Instead of recalling Arnie, Sly, Bruce et al this time Swierczynski has given us an update on the pulpy prison thriller that calls on Sartre, Oldboy, Shawshank Redemption and The Stanford Prison Experiment, told with the gritty realism of the Redford movie Brubaker, again with the craziness ratcheted up to eleven. The third novel is bound to take in a whole other sub-genre of pulp crime writing and I can't wait to find a copy.

After Fun & Games They have Charlie under their control, the nefarious multinational organisation leave him drugged and physically damaged and made the warden of a super-secret underground prison. All Charlie wants is to make sure his family are OK but boy is he made to crawl through miles of sewage to even have any hope of making that dream of a boat on a beach with Morgan Freeman as his Man Friday a reality.

Brilliantly written and demonstrating a vast array of knowledge in the multitude of genres touched upon Hell & Gone is not the same piece of unbridled entertainment as Fun & Games but as an extension of the first book it's a fascinating chapter in the messed up life of Charlie Hardie.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruised, beaten, and broken Charlie Hardie is a glutton for punishment - a human pin cushion of pain and violent provocation - a modern day Bruce Willis in Die Hard whose nine lives seem to regenerate much like a genie gifted him a curse by which the nightmare never ends and the line of pain inflicting suitors lengthens by the hour. In Swierczynski's follow-up to 'Fun and Games', part 2 of the Hardie saga introduces a whole new kind of hell in the form of a subterranean prison, home to dangerous killers all wanting a piece of the unwilling protagonist. From warden to inmate, Hardie, assumes whatever role necessary to keep him alive and the clock ticking for his captures imminent death.

Whilst building on the ethos of the Accident People introduced in ‘Fun and Games’, ‘Hell and Gone’ explores new ground and expands the conspiracy to serve as more than a bridge to the next instalment by adding context and deeper substance to an already intriguing cast.

Key plot thread aside, Swierczynski builds a nice bit of symmetry at facility 7734 amongst the inhabitants and their life pre containment by detailing past events which shape the corporations foundations and reach (anyone, anytime). The basement crazy characters of the facility work well and serve a purpose in defining the true Bruce Willis-ness of Hardies survival ability.

‘Hell and Gone’ is a very different look and feel to its predecessor but is just as enjoyable. I am interested to see where the story heads as the inevitable conclusion draws nearer in book 3. 4 stars.

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duane Swierczynski's debut into a three part series detective thriller comes across like a fine cabernet (and I went into it with only one bottle left). What happens is you savor the taste. In this case, I read Fun and Games and the second installment Hell and Gone in the Charlie Hardy mystery series knowing I'd have to wait until 2013 for the third installment.

For fans of Donovan Creed (by John Locke) you'll likely enjoy Swierczynski's Charlie Hardy series, whose books by the way are better than Swierczynski's stand alone novels (at least the two stand alone books I've read). The plot is captivating, very creative, sharp edged and unusual to say the least. Like Locke's hero Donovan Creed, we're thrown into a world that lies just below the reality we all know. Unlike Creed who lives outside of society, our tragic hero Charlie Hardy does not belong in that world and he is in for a rude shock starting with the first few pages of the first book. From that point on, the reader is in for a fast, easy ride down Swierczynski's lane...the plot never once letting up, not even as you reach the last words in each novel.

Come to think of it, it might be better to say that reading Swierczynsk's first two series novels is like reading chapters one and two of a three chapter single novel...each flowing into the other at the exact spot where the latter left off (something you don't see often from authors).

So, take a swig of Swierczynski's Cabernet, let this pulp writer give you an unkillable hero and then let the wine slide smoothly down your throat. You won't regret it.

As usual with series novels, if you've read my Charlie Hardy review, you've read 'em all. Assessment: damn, I wish I didn't have to wait until 2013. But, I've pre-ordered the third in the series so I know it's coming...:-)

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sigh. This book was no where near as good as its predecessor.

I mean, it takes some doing to be even less realistic than Fun and GamesFun and Games but here you have it.

In summary (some mild spoilers for Fun and Games): After royally pissing off The Accident People, Charlie Hardie is abducted and sent to a bizzaro kafka-esque prison. There he interacts with the various guards the prisoners and plots his escape.*

So, one of the things that made Fun and Games so engaging was the claustrophobia invoked by the Hollywood Hills. Ironically, the claustrophobia induced by the prison where most of the action in the book takes place has the opposite effect. The Hollywood Hills are sufficiently accessible that new characters could be introduced or removed, where as the prison was static and as a result the stakes felt waaaaay lower.

Plus, I don't know, the way my brain is wired I'm willing to accept that there is a secret society of assassins that, for the right price, commit murders and make them look like accidents, but i'm not really willing to accept that those same people would own an underground prison**. Nor still would they at the very end.***

* Major pet peeve here: the conceit of the prison was _both_ bewilderingly obvious, and tremendously badly explained.
** (Mild Spoiler) Let alone one affiliated with a major university.
*** If you've read the book (or even the synopsis of the sequel you'll know what I mean.)

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Duane Swierczynski is a master plot writer. It's so deliciously convoluted that it's hard to write a review. This is book 2 in the continuing saga of Charlie Hardy agaisnt the immense insane shenanigans of The Accident people.

Part crime fiction, part thriller, part omg wtf. I'm on to book 3 soon.

[Иван Величков · Rating 3 out of 5]

Продължението на историята за Неубиваемия Чък не ми допадна толкова, колкото предходната част. Макар да се доближава повече до стила от другите романи на Дуейн, за очаквах някак още от същото като в предишната книга.
Тук нашето момче Чарли продължава от където свърши Fun & Games, демек упоен, прострелян и поел в непозната посока. Събужда се, очевидно след доста време, осакатен и отслабен и попада в изродски затвор, където се играе нещо като Станфордския затворнически експеримент и Експериментът на Милграм, но на стероиди и с много опасни типове, вместо със студенти. Тези прилики леко издават развръзките на микроисториите и притъпяват бруталността на въпросната институция. СЛед първите петдесет-шесдесет страници, в които почти нищо не се случва, главната интрига сякаш потъва на заден план и дори развръзката стои някак изкуствено. Единствено мога да се надявам, че цялото това беше подготовка за финално изкъртване в третата част, а не авторово безсилие със сюжета.
Ъъъъ... не че книгата е лоша, просто предишната зверски вдигна летвата, сякаш.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first book in this series “Fun & Games” was an almost perfect guilty pleasure a spike of adrenaline that raced along as fast as I could turn the pages. Never mind the unreal characters, the slightly absurd plot, or the frustrating conclusion - it was just a damn fun read. This, the second in the series, is not. The plot is just too absurd, the characters too unreal and event barely push forward. The vast bulk of the book could be skipped by the reader, and it would make no difference. I will absolutely read the third book in the series, but I will do so hoping for a return to the glory of the first.

[Ed [Redacted] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlie Hardie is the functional equivalent of a comic book hero, and I mean that in the best possible way. This is the second of the three (so far?) books chronicling Hardie's war against the secret group who actually controls the United States. Hardie takes an amazing amount of punishment, as usual, and dishes out even more. Though these books aren't, in my opinion, up to the usual plotting and prose standards of some earlier Swierczynski books (notably The Wheelman and The Blonde), they are certainly a lot of fun to read.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blew through in a day. I loved "Fun and Games" and this was much of the same.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may have liked the first book more, but the ending/setup for book 3 has me reeling! No way!?

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when a comic book writer drives his bombastic imagination onto the gravelly driveway of neo-noir? The Charlie Hardie series, that's what- the first book was a four-alarm fire that exploded and kept exploding until... well, it didn't ever stop, because the second book picks up where the first left off.. But "Hell & Gone" is also a different kind of book, turning a different kind of direction: deep in its goings, rather than horizontally frantic. And somehow, although I might not have expected it, a better book than the first, because it takes time to isolate and breathe and consider the darkness and find a way to climb right out of it up to the stars...? I'll shut up now, but let me just say, what a setup for the final book of the trilogy! Look, just go ahead, get the first book, it's called "Fun & Games". Just do it, you know you want to.... ;)

[Vaelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frantic action and more twists than a misshaped pretzel!

This book would be perfect to easily plough through on a short-medium haul flight.

On to the conclusion!

[Kelly Hager · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the events of Fun & Games, Charlie Hardie has disappeared. The country thinks he murdered Lane Madden and is on the run, but really, he's been taken by the Accident People. In this book, he learns that he's the new warden of a prison they run. Since he's in charge, he can technically try and escape but it's pretty much impossible. And if he does find a way, a "death mechanism" will be tripped and everyone will die---prisoners, guards, everyone. There's also the fact that if he gets away, his wife and son will be killed, probably brutally.

Reading this series (and this book in particular), it's amazing to think about just how far this conspiracy (for lack of a better word) goes. It's very Rosemary's Baby, in terms of there being literally no one that you can trust. Chances are good that whomever you'd talk to wouldn't be part of the conspiracy, but there's no way to know that for sure until it's too late. And, of course, even if they weren't part of the Accident People, they'd believe you were crazy. Because you know what happens if you start ranting about fake accidents and a shadowy cabal who kill people but make it look innocent? You get put away.

And there's also the final wrinkle: if you trust someone and they (a) are not part of the conspiracy and (b) actually believe you, you've just pretty much signed their death warrant. So there's that, too.

The idea of having to fight this immense group (so immense that probably we've only seen maybe a tenth of what they can do) with no help whatsoever? Very scary. So it's good that Charlie Hardie is the one fighting them, because this guy is seriously indestructible. Just in book one, he survived poison and being shot several times (one of which was in the head!) to say nothing of the threats he managed to avoid! And he doesn't get an easier time of it in this book, either. He puts James Bond to shame. (Hell, he puts the Terminator---the model of your choosing, too---to shame.)

Fortunately for me, the second book doesn't end in a cliffhanger. I desperately want to read the third book (Point & Shoot, out in March) but at least this time, Duane Swierczynski was kind enough to not make the wait too unbearable.

Definitely read this series. It's amazing and so, so fun. Highly recommended.

[gert · Rating 4 out of 5]

a continuation of book one that starts literally the minute after. and just as fabulous.

what's not fabulous? that i have to wait until 2013 for the next one. WTF? there's even a preview of it at the end of this book. so what's the story? building up suspense is fine, and i'm sure a great business model. but not when it irritates ME. and it does. because i want to keep hardie in my life. right now. not 12 months from now. grrr.

[AlcoholBooksCinema · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All human evil comes from a single cause- man's inability to sit still in a room."

1. Hardie is going through a “Fucked-up Find-out” phase.
2. He is fucked up like a snake in a lawn mower because he is the bastard they hate, but don't dare to kill.
3. They will attend Hardie's funeral just to make sure he is dead.
4. I learned how to pronounce Swierczynski because I'll be reading more books written by him.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay you have to suspend belief in reality when you read this series but they are such a fun read and non-stop action.

On to the final one, which starts with our hero fired out into space in a rocket...

[Yuckamashe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fucking Duane! I dont understand you! I love 2 of your books. Two others are too weird and far fetched. Back off the science and conspiracy theories! Stick to what you excel at, tough guys with hearts of gold that are impossible to kill.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome sequel to FUN & GAMES. Charlie Hardie is put through the wringer (almost literally) in every fashion. You will love it. And of course, be jonesing for POINT AND SHOOT.

[Ken Finlay · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Hell And Gone” follows directly on from the events in “Fun and Games.”
Charlie Hardie is a captive of 'The Accident People'.
As a result of that finale he's got a gammy leg and a weak arm.
He finds himself appointed Warden of a super secret underground prison complex where no-one – prisoner or guard - is what they seem and psychological manipulation is the name of the game. It is reminiscent of Kafka and, in particular the 1960s TV series 'The Prisoner' (starring Patrick McGoohan).
The only contact with the outside world is through radio contact with 'The Prisonmaster'. The exit has been totally sealed off and any attempted escape will, Charlie is told, result in the death of everyone in the facility.
Which, as far as Charlie is concerned, is an open-ended instruction to escape at any cost.
It's only a matter of time …
It's not quite as good as the first in the series but, with the third and final book in mind, the very end makes just about anything possible.
3.5 Stars, raised to 4 Dtars.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished the second Charlie Hardie novel, "Hell & Gone," and it is just as good (if not better) than the first book, "Fun & Games." Charlie is still dealing with the Accident People and, once again, they prevail. This time around, they put Charlie in a remote secret prison and proceed to mess with him, both physically and mentally. Charlie resists the punishment and soon learns the truth of his incarceration. And he puts together a plan... Duane Swierczynski once again displays his dazzling storytelling skills in this noir crime thriller, and has me looking forward to the final installment, "Point & Shoot."

[M. Sprouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very ingenious and innovative idea for a book. Unfortunately the fish was too big for the boat. It seemed Duane Swierczynski didn't quite know what to do after he landed a unique setting and plot. The prison was too confusing and unbelievable, maybe okay for a comic book, but not so much in a novel. In the end, the "Accident People" are just too on top of things. I wish they were real so we good get them to run the country. I guess if you can suspend a good dose of disbelief and don't mind dark and gloomy, this might be more than 3 stars for you. I really liked the first of the series "Fun & Game" much better and almost gave that one 5 stars.

[Mkb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book came with high recommendations on the cover. They were all true. But it is not my kind of book. I could handle reading it, but I couldn’t have borne watching a filmed version of it. Full of torture. It has been a while since I read a Jim Thompson book, but this seemed to have kind de the same thing going—unhappy people In a terrible world. One of the scariest and striking things about it was that it posited that there is a terrible, twisted world beneath the one we live in, mirroring ours—kind of like Narnia in reverse.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story picks off where the first book ended, mostly. I won't say much because anything I could say would be a spoiler. Suffice to say that this book is totally bizarre. Freaky, but I could not stop reading it. I do have book number 3 that should finish this up. Charlie Hardie is in a league of his own. If you start these books, you have to finish them. Trust me. You have to finish them. tee hee