Duane Swierczynski Talks Moving Backstory of New Novel in Return to Houston’s Murder by the Book

by

Scott D. Parker

It’s been nine years since Philadelphia native Duane Swierczynski had a book signing at Houston’s Murder by the Book. In fact, as he told the folks who turned out last Friday night, this store was where he had his first book signing. What he appreciated, he told us, was how much the store had not changed. 

He, on the other hand, has.

Swierczynski is the author of over a dozen novels, numerous short stories, and dozens of comics. He is married and is the father of two children. One, however, his daughter, Evelyn, was diagnosed with leukemia back in 2018. Swierczynski and his wife took turns spending the night in the hospital so Evie wouldn’t be alone. It was during these difficult times that the genesis of his new novel California Bear, began.

Back in 2016, the Swierczynski family moved to Los Angeles, but it was Duane and Evie who scouted out the city. Father and daughter discovered great places to eat and fun and famous places they had only read about. As Duane told the story at the store in an interview format by owner McKenna Jordan Duffey, Evie loved food, and they ended up doing a food tour of LA. Food ended up permeating California Bear.

In October 2018, Evie succumbed to her illness and Duane set California Bear aside. In another recent interview, Duane stated “I thought, I’m not sure I can finish this.” He didn’t even pick it up for a long time. 

But when he did, Evie channeled her voice into the prose. One of the characters in the new novel is Matilda, a fifteen-year-old who is diagnosed with leukemia. She’s determined to find out the truth about her dad: was he a murderer or was he innocent?

There’s also a true crime aspect to California Bear, something McKenna asked Duane about. He answered honestly. Too much attention is focused on the sensationality of these stories and too little on the fact that real people are involved. “It’s someone’s bad day,” Duane said. “The focus should be on the people, the human beings behind the headlines.”

Working with James Patterson

Speaking of attention, Duane commented on the battle for the attention spans of people and how much effort a potential reader has to bring to the act of reading “symbols on a page to see the movie in your mind.” When it comes to TV, movies, or anything streaming, viewers don’t have to do anything. They just sit there and the story washes over them. Readers, however, are co-authors with the writer, and that takes work. 

One way to help people choose to be an active reader rather than a passive viewer is the pace of the prose, and there are few writers who write with such a propulsive pace as James Patterson. “He’s the hardest working guy in the business,” Duane said of Patterson, with whom he has collaborated a few times (including the wildly fun Lion and Lamb from last year). All the books that bear Patterson’s name pass through him.

Duane enjoyed working with Patterson, but he confessed that the small talk aspect of their relationship is vastly unequal. One time Patterson called up Duane and mentioned he was hanging out with Dolly Parton. Duane’s response was that he was walking his dog.

The Proust Questionnaire

McKenna ended the interview portion of the event with a few questions. Aside from the funnier ones (What’s an overrated virtue? “Chastity” and When do you lie? “I lie for a living”), it was Duane’s answer to “What do you most dislike?” that struck home for me. “Haters.” Empathy is important, Duane said. “You don’t know what people are going through.” Man, is that the truth.

Becoming Himself as a Writer Again

McKenna asked Duane about his writing process and schedule. He confessed that after Evie, he needed to ramp up his writerly skills and used short stories to do just that. He mentioned that last year, he actually wrote a novel in longhand, just him, a pen, and the paper. But through all the comics and short stories and the “roulette wheel” of grief, Duane said that California Bear is proof that he’s “back to myself.” 

I’m really looking forward to diving into Duane’s new novel, and I hope it won’t be another nine years before he returns to Houston.

The Evelyn Swierczynski Foundation

Evie was an avid reader and enjoyed the Literally Healing Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where every patient is given a new book everyday. Every Christmas season, Murder by the Book and other independent bookstores participate in a book drive to keep the hospital filled with books. But you don’t have to wait until the holiday season to contribute. Head on over to the foundation's website to find out how you can help—including blood and bone marrow registry drive and the big goal of “Evie’s Bites”—and keep Evie’s spirit and Light bright.

Lion and Lamb: The Book With the Wittiest Banter This Side of Nick and Nora

by
Scott D. Parker

“They can catch a killer—if they don’t kill each other first.”

That’s the tagline for LION & LAMB, the new novel by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski, released just a couple of weeks ago and I downloaded the audiobook that very day. Yet I had to finish another book before I pushed play on Lion & Lamb, but as soon as it started, I wondered why it took me so long.

Okay, fine, it was only a week.

Quarterback Archie Hughes of the Philadelphia Eagles is a week away from starting in the NFC Championship Game, the last step before the Super Bowl. And he’s found dead in his car.

But things don’t add up. That’s when Philly’s two most high-profile private investigators take opposing sides of the case. Witty, charming, and roguishly handsome Cooper Lamb is hired to find out the truth for the widow, Francine Hughes. The district attorney’s office reaches out to Veena Lion, a wicked-smart PI who can be as cold as her martinis but coy with what she knows.

The pair have a past and it’s referenced from time to time, but that just makes this pairing and their wonderful tete-a-tete that much more fun. We get to avoid the meet-cute and just get plopped down in the middle of what is the highest-profile case they’ve handled.

I am a shoe-in for “Nick and Nora”-type stories: The Thin Man movies, Hart to Hart, Moonlighting, and The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal. So I was already in the bag for a tale like, but here’s the real secret:

This book is So Much Fun!

Patterson is known for many things, but high-speed pacing is certainly among the top things you think about when you consider reading one of his novels. From the jump, you are plunged into the action and sent barreling from one scene to the next. Swierczynski, a native of Philly, added lots of local color and I suspect local Philadelphians got a kick out of all the places mentioned.

The mystery at the center of the book is twisty—NOTE: I have not finished the book yet, but I couldn’t wait to write about it—but it is the characters that jump off the page (or out of my earbuds) and land fully formed.

I’m an avid audiobook listener and the two main narrators are so good at their readings that you basically don’t need the attributions. Lisa Flanagan embodies Veena just as if she stepped out of a 1940s PI film but with an utterly modern sensibility. Her tone alone lets the listener in on just how much (or little) Veena thinks about certain characters. Corey Carthew is the voice of Lamb and you can hear the sing-song snark just eek out of every piece of dialogue. He’s a single father with a young daughter and son and the relationship between that trio is fantastic. It’s like Lamb is having the time of his life trying to solve this case.

A third narrator, Joshua Kane, uses his deep baritone to let us know the chapter names and the scenes. His voice is one that when I looked him up, I realized I recognized from, of all things, commercials.

When you find a book or characters that you instantly form a connection with, you just want more and more stories. As a writer, I know how long the process can take.

Which is why I’m requesting, on behalf of all the reading audience, that Patterson and Swierczynski write a new Lion and Lamb novel every year.

Oh, and TV execs? Read this one. And then make the series. Call me. I’ve got some ideas on casting.

Five Hachette Books To Love

By Steve Weddle

Lost in much of the Amazon vs. Hachette discussion has been the number of good books and cool authors publishing under the Hachette name.

If you're looking for some good reads, check out these Hachette titles -- past, present, and future.

Feel free to add your own favorite Hachette authors and books in the comments.

Also, shopping indie is a swell idea, while you're at it. My favorites are Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Mysterious Bookshop in NYC, and One More Page in Arlington. You can find your locals at Indiebound.org or order from one of my favorites.

Hugs,

Me

The Fever by Megan Abbott

The Nash family is close-knit. Tom is a popular teacher, father of two teens: Eli, a hockey star and girl magnet, and his sister Deenie, a diligent student. Their seeming stability, however, is thrown into chaos when Deenie's best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class. Rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through the family, school and community.

As hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families and the town's fragile idea of security.

A chilling story about guilt, family secrets and the lethal power of desire,The Fever affirms Megan Abbot's reputation as "one of the most exciting and original voices of her generation" (Laura Lippman).

**

Fun & Games by Duane Swierczynski

We picked this one for our DoSomeDamage Book Group a while back.

The first of three explosive pulp thrillers arriving back-to-back from cult crime fiction sensation and Marvel Comics scribe Duane Swierczynski.

Charlie Hardie, an ex-cop still reeling from the revenge killing of his former partner's entire family, fears one thing above all else: that he'll suffer the same fate.

Languishing in self-imposed exile, Hardie has become a glorified house sitter. His latest gig comes replete with an illegally squatting B-movie actress who rants about hit men who specialize in making deaths look like accidents. Unfortunately, it's the real deal. Hardie finds himself squared off against a small army of the most lethal men in the world: The Accident People.

It's nothing personal-the girl just happens to be the next name on their list. For Hardie, though, it's intensely personal. He's not about to let more innocent people die. Not on his watch.

**

Alpha by Greg Rucka

For the visitors to Wilsonville, the largest theme park in the world, the day began with a smile. By the end, they wonder-will they be able to escape with their lives?

Retired Delta Force operator, Master Sergeant Jonathan "Jad" Bell, is Wilsonville's lead undercover security officer. The threat begins with the announcement of a hidden dirty bomb, but quickly becomes something far, far worse.

Trained since the age of seventeen to save innocent victims from impossible hostage situations, Jad scrambles to assess the threat and protect the visitors. He will come face to face with a villain whose training matches his in every way-and presents a threat Jad may not be able to stop.

**

Skinner by Charlie Huston

Skinner founded his career in "asset protection" on fear. To touch anyone under his protection was to invite destruction. A savagely effective methodology, until Skinner's CIA handlers began to fear him as much as his enemies did and banished him to the hinterlands of the intelligence community.

Now, an ornate and evolving cyber-terrorist attack is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare.

At the root of it all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction.

A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy from the novelist hailed by theWashington Post as "the voice of twenty-first century crime fiction," SKINNER is Charlie Huston's masterpiece--a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.

**

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

Book Review: Fun and Games by Duane

(It's the holiday weekend and, frankly, I don't have anything profound. I enjoyed Russel's post about the lack of men at book events and thought that I could post this review of the latest book by Swiercznyski, definitely an author men should read and talk about. So let's chat...)

Job I would not want: Person trying to classify a Duane Swiercznyski book.

Sure, “crime fiction” is a nice umbrella if you want to use it, but that doesn’t quite do justice to the types of books Swiercznyski writes. Okay, early books like “The Wheelman” are straight up crime-y things, but some of his more recent books—The Blonde, Expiration Date—are not. Put his newest hard-to-classify tale, Fun and Games, into the latter camp.

Charles Hardie makes his living an interesting way: he’s a professional house sitter. He’s also a former Philadelphia cop who is fleeing personal demons from the past. Only things he requires other than the paycheck are booze and old movies, preferably on DVD. His latest contract is the LA home of a musician who has been called away to Europe.

Lane Madden, B-movie actress and A-list druggie, is driving in the Hollywood hills. She, too, has demons in her past, as the tabloids are quite eager to exploit. Those headlights she sees following her? They’re getting closer. Thinking the driver will pass her, she stops (dumb move). She’s attacked, but escapes into the night.

Think these two stories tie in together? Natch. Hardie arrives at the musician’s home and the keys aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Long story short, he has to break in to said house only to be attacked by a woman who turns out to be Madden. She thinks Hardie’s one of Them. Notice the capitalization? “Them” are the Accident People, killers hired to off high profile celebrities and make the deaths look, well, accidental. Hardie doesn’t believe her, until some stuff hits the proverbial fan.

Job I would not want: People who clean up after bloody death scenes.

I’ve read enough Swiercznyski books now to know one of his patterns: many of his tales take place in a short timeframe. The Blonde, in book time, lasted about twelve hours, Severance Package even less. Fun and Games, if I had to count up the hours, maybe clocks in about a day, give or take. The brilliance of this technique—where a reader is halfway through a book realizing only then that only a few hours have passed for the characters—is the distillation of the action down to a science. Jumping in and out of characters’ POVs, Swiercznyski is able to describe the action with balletic grace, giving nuances to violence reserved only for slo-mo shots in action films. Speaking of action films, there’s a great moment when Madden, faced with her own death a few times, relies on all the training she did for her B-movies. Even as she’s kicking ass, she’s marveling (and thanking) all her hours of training.

I’m usually a slower reader, but reading a Swiercznyski breaks the curve. Fun and Games travels at such a high rate of speed that I was devouring this book in chunks, not chapters. And the pop culture references are a scream. It’s one of Swiercznyski’s trademark prose stylings to reference just about anything at a given point. Since he and I are roughly the same age, he knows what I know, and I love it.

Another fun aspect of Fun and Games was the setting. Swiercznyski’s a Philly guy, the City of Brotherly Love plays a vital role in his books. Fun and Games is a California novel. In the afterward, you learn the thing Swiercznyski experienced that triggered the germ of this story. I’ve only visited California a couple of times, but I seriously got the vibe from this book. Heck, now I want to visit again.

The Accident People. Now, this concept is scary, but, in Swiercznyski’s hands, they’re a little bit funny, too. Don’t get me wrong. They kill people, staging the deaths as accidents. But you get enough background here to want to know more about these guys. Best thing about the book: the cliffhanger ending. You see, Fun and Games is the first of a trilogy of Charlie Hardie stories. Usually, Swiercznyski’s characters are so beat to hell by the end of the book that any thought of a continuing series is moot. Well, Hardie gets his ass handed to him again and again, but he keeps getting up. Yeah, the book ends on a cliffhanger, but guess what? You get chapter one of Hell and Gone, the next book, as a bonus. (Checking the calendar) How long until October?

Classifying a Swiercznyski book: pulp fiction, pure and simple, just like they used to write back in the day. Guy and gal get into a bad situation and have to fight their way out of it. Are they gonna make it? Read and find out.

Job I do want: Reader of anything Duane Swiercznyski writes.

P.S. Once you are done reading, head on over to Do Some Damage's book club. We're chatting about Fun and Games this month.

Beach House Noir

By Steve Weddle

Now is the day the crows come home to roost. Or the roosters come home to crow. Or maybe they're black skimmers.

The Noir at Beach House deadline is today. Below are the links for folks who have let me know what's what. You still have time to post a link to your story in the comments -- or email me. Or tie it to the foot of a carrier rooster and send along.

"Insanely entertaining." That's what Josh Bazell said about FUN AND GAMES from Duane Swierczynski. Might as well say the same thing about all the fantastic entries for the DSD challenge. Check these out ->

Peter Rozovsky

Benoit Lelievre

Charlie Wade

Evil Ray

David James Keaton

Al Tucher

Eric Beetner

Thomas Pluck

Gerald So

Keith Karabin

Stephen D. Rogers

Katherine Tomlinson

Kieran Shea

Don Lafferty

Fiona McDroll Johnson

If I missed someone, post in the comments and I'll update. If you're coming in late, post in the comments today and you'll still be entered to win FUN AND GAMES from Duane Swierczynski. I'll pick a name late Monday (today?) afternoon.

FUN AND GAMES is the first of three Charlie Hardie thrillers from Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books).
Charlie is an ex- sort-of cop with the requisite wounded psyche, avoiding his past by running around the country house-sitting, drinking, and watching olde tyme movies.

His shot at redemption comes in the Hollywood Hills, trying to save a movie star from sure death. Much like that poor young man in CLERKS who wasn't even supposed to be here today, Charlie was supposed to be drunk in someone else's house, watching old Robert Mitchum movies.

What really works well in this book is that as the action moves forward -- explosions, poisonings, car chases -- the story moves backwards, bringing depth and explanation via character backstory.

Who are these Accident People trying to kill movie star Lane Madden? And why?
And why did Charlie Hardie run away and hide from his life, leaving his wife and kid far away?
And what's in that damned bag he can't live without?

As the story moves along from one chase scene to another, the story of Lane Madden's Secret is revealed a little more. As Lane Madden's backstory is revealed, so is Charlie Hardie's.

This book moves. Not just in the normal thriller way, not just racing from one explosion to the next. These explosions are more like dynamite thrown at that mountain where that dude was making the Crazy Horse monument. The more explosions, the more is revealed. And once that thing is revealed, you know, it's pretty freaking cool.

FUN AND GAMES is available this month. The second in the three-parter is set to hit shelves in October.

You'll dig this book.

One lucky person in our Noir at the Beach House contest will get a copy of the book. Will let you know shortly.

Thanks for playing.

And Now for Something Completely Different

by Dave White

Scott Parker often talks about his experience reading Shutter Island. He says when he sat down with it, he expected Mystic River Part 2. He wanted Lehane to give him another version of the same book. (And now, he says, he can't wait to read SI again. I think he's gonna love it, knowing what he's been reading recently.)

I've been thinking a lot about his statement though. Being disappointed in a book because you expected the same type of book as the one that came before it. I used to be the same way. I could read several Ross MacDonald or Robert B. Parker books in a row and not get tired of them.

Now, I look for something different.

I love that Lehane went out and stretched his writing muscles to give us a private eye series, then a small town Greek Tragedy, then a gothic horror novel, then a huge historical melodrama. I could sit here and argue that all his novel fall into crime fiction somehow, they are all tied to the genre, but they're like balloons tethered to the same banister--each string leads to the same place, but at the end of each you'll find a different color.

Anytime I email Duane Swierczynski that I'm about to start one of his books, he writes back something along the lines of "Just so you know, it's NOTHING like the last one." (By the way, his forthcoming novel EXPIRATION DATE is fantastic. I just received and ARC.)

That's one of my favorite things about Duane's books, much like Lehane. I never know what I'm gonna get. I could get a spy novel that makes Pepperidge farm cookies frightening. Or a book about a sexy blonde who poisons a drink. But each goes off in a different direction.

You want something new from an author. You don't want to read the same book over and over again. If you like that, then you also want to be able to recognize who the killer is by page 50.

But I like most of my writers to stretch their writing muscles. I want to do that too. Even in a series, I often don't want to see the characters going through the same thing over and over again (certain characters aside).

The book I'm working on now is different. There are things in it that I've never done before. It's surprised me at times as well. It has been hell on my writing muscles. What I have planned after this book is even more different.

(Also, if you want to see something really different, you can read about Band Bashes at my own blog. See? I can stretch my muscles.)

Just like the authors I love.

And each time I start, I'm excited to see something new happen.