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.

Where Have All The Men Gone?

By Russel D McLean

Last week I attended a great event in Ayr. It was the second “reader’s day” I’d attended, and as ever it was great fun to mix with writers in other genres and styles as well as meet the readers and discuss not only my own books but those of other authors too.

More than usual, however, something struck me about this particular day:

There were no men.

Well, that’s a lie. There was one man. One man who’d booked a ticket maybe two days before the event after reading about it on my twitter stream (which perhaps in part provides another answer to the question – how do we reach men in the first place?). And all power to his elbow, because he had some great insights into both the book I’d chosen by another writer and my own novel, too.

Like my twitter friend, I’ve occasionally been the only man at a book event and it’s a strange sensation. As with Ayr, the women are all very welcoming, but there is a sense of being the other, of being oddly out of place. Of having different cultural references and touchstones.

And you wonder why there are no other men there.

The stereotype is, of course, that men don’t read. That’s what we’re all told. That we’re anomalies because statistically we shouldn’t read.

But I don’t think that’s true.

Put a group of men together and often we will talk about books. Not often the books, we admit, that are chosen for book clubs, but then I have to wonder if we are perhaps more solitary readers, if we shy away from “organised” talk of books.

Maybe, then, it is that we talk about books differently. That could explain the success of a few “men only” reading groups. The rules of social engagement are different. While I love attending book groups as an author, I have never done so personally because I find the idea of merely talking about one book odd. I prefer an organic exchange or recommendation and ideas.

Or perhaps it’s that we’re told so often that we don’t read that we might begin to believe it. After all, when I first started writing crime a person high up in the industry said, “don’t write for yourself because men of your age will never read crime.” Which seemed then, and still does seem, crazy. Because I was a crime reader at that age. Albeit, I realise now, not reading what that particular person considered to be crime novels.

As ever, I think it might a little from column and a) little from column b).

I do believe that many men don’t read or don’t attend book events because they are made to feel its not for them. We read in newspapers and we’re told by people that we are a demographic who doesn’t read so we start to believe that as a truism and we shy away from reading and book events because its “not for us”. This is a shame.

I also think we may not be being targeted as well as we could be. Again notice our man showed up at the event through following a twitter stream, rather than hearing direct through the library or – metaphorically speaking “instore”. And when I think about it, it’s the same way I hear about events. Through newsgroups, online and more “fannish” methods. I rarely “stumble across” an event.

But whatever the case, here’s something we should remember at all times:

Real men read. Real men talk about reading.

So let’s talk – come on guys, tell us why you do or don’t attend book events. Talk about whether you’d start or join a book group. Talk about the books you love and the books you don’t love.

Talk about what makes you read a book.

Talk about reading.