Books : Severance Package

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Author name: Duane Swierczynski

: Severance Package
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9780312343804
ISBN number: 0312343809
Label: St. Martin's Minotaur
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: May 27, 2008
Publishing house: St. Martin's Minotaur
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 69512
Studio: St. Martin's Minotaur



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Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:


Jamie DeBroux’s boss has called a special meeting for all “key personnel” at 9:00 a.m. on a hot Saturday in August.



When Jamie arrives, the conference room is stocked with cookies and champagne. His boss smiles and tells his employees, “We’re a cover for a branch of the intelligence community. And we’re being shut down.” Jamie’s boss then tells everyone to drink some champagne, and in a few seconds they’ll fall asleep---for good. If they refuse, they’ll be shot in the head.



Escape is not an option. Jamie’s boss has shut down the elevators and rigged the fire towers with chemical bombs. Panic sets in, chaos erupts, and no one is sure whom to trust. Jamie quickly realizes that there’s only one way he’s ever going to see his family again: the hard way.





Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - A extreme locked room thriller
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.


Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - Falls apart about 2/3 through
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.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - What a ride!
This is the very first book that I have read by this author, but I know that it won't be the last. His style of writing is really "over the top", but in a good way. The plot is like taking a roller coaster ride into a series of dark tunnels, not knowing what's going to appear when you come out at the end of each one. The action is fast and furious, and if at times it seems a bit "too much", I can forgive that because the story is so engrossing and kept me turning page after page, eagerly devouring the events. The characters aren't really well-defined, but perhaps in a book of this type they don't really need to be. Read it for yourself and see what I mean.


Rated by buyers 2 out of 5 stars - Something to read in the laundromat
This book reads quickly, and thank god because otherwise I would have put it down at some point. I almost did in the very first couple chapters, but morbid curiosity kept drawing me on. Not regarding the story necessarily, but because 1) I wanted to see how many self-referential items the author would include in this book. Can any Philadelphia author NOT write like all they can make is bad fanfic about Rittenhouse Square? All the silly references to local bars, restaurants, convenience store chains, etc, not even well described as if written only for a Philadelphia local. I disagree with the comment that he brings the details of the city to life. Rather, I think he self-indulgently assumes his reader will appreciate these references; and 2) His use of real people and places, as he puts it, "used fictitiously". Usually, I expect a fiction writer to put more work into their book, come up with a more original story, not just overlay what reads like a violent and disturbing daydream over real people and places (yes I can easily guess who he based characters on and where he based places on, etc), like when kids tell stories but change "Benny" to "Lenny". This would have been a great story told at summer camp, but it doesn't quite work as a serious book.


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - A "Kill Bill" sensibililty
When someone tells me a book is written with a movie script in mind, it turns me off. But What if you could watch a terrific, violent movie and read the characters' minds? This harrowing scary ride of a book does that. Very simple, yet too vivid not to enjoy. The author tells you terrible things, and he feels for his characters, but that doesn't stop him from telling the tale.

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