A far-fetched story must be plausibly told,so your nonsense isn't showing. Alfred Hitchcock Every chapter of this first Charlie Hardie thriller is prefaced with a quote from the movie world. This is not accidental, as the story is set in Hollywood, mostly in a luxury mansion perched on the side of one of those steep canyons overlooking the city of angels. The style of the book is also very cinematic, more like the 80's action movies than the classic 'noir' I was expecting. The influences are cle...

Charlie Hardie is a former under-the-table employee of the Philly police force before an incident altered his life and forced a drastic career change. Charlie is now a house sitter who agrees to sit on your couch, down beers and watch old movies why you're off having a life somewhere else. Hardie takes a job watching a home when upon arrival, he's attacked by well known actress/socialite, Lane Madden.Madden is spouting off conspiracy theories about "them", an unknown group dubbed, "The Accident

This a wild high speed action novel that will leave you gasping for air. Reading I was reminded of seeing Die Hard the first time in a theater. Not in plot or setting sense, no more that gleeful gut feeling that was seeing a fresh new wild take on the action movie. FUN & GAMES grabbed my from word one, and never let go. I'm dyslexic, I read slow, I lost several nights of sleep to this amazing book. If you are fan of good action movies, you will love this book. It ready like the best John Woo Hon...

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 tha...

"You're not invincible," she continued. "You're just a man. You can be killed." "Yeah, I kn-know," Hardie said. "Pull up a lawn chair and you can watch it happen any minute now."5 things you learn from Fun and Games:1. When life finally stops kicking you in the teeth, you don't whine and count the gaps. You see the fucking dentist and move on.2. When you stop understanding the plot, you put down the bottle and close your eyes. 3. You are fucked if you are having get-hit-by-a-car-and-discover-yo

Damn, talk about a thriller! This thing comes guns blazing right out the gate and maintains it's fast pace all the way through. One thing you definitely can't say about Swierczynski is that he's boring. He really knows how to keep the reader interested. He tells us the story of Charlie Hardie, an ex-police "consultant" who is trying to distance himself from mistakes in the past by enjoying the exile and solitude of house sitting. On his latest job in the Hollywood Hills, he stumbles onto a beaut...

Duane Swierczynski must be exhausted. I don't know how else you could write a story with the breakneck pace of FUN & GAMES without having to take a long nap afterward. It's that action-packed. But no nap for Duane, instead he wrote two more Charlie Hardie books set to come out over the next year.FUN & GAMES hits the ground running and never lets up. And it's able to do it while maintaining at least some footing in reality. It's over-the-top to be sure, but the humanity that Swierczynski gives to...

Charlie Hardie was once a secret weapon in the Philadelphia PD. But he blames himself for a tragedy that occurred three years earlier. He's left the force and slowly faded away into his own personal oblivion. He now "works" as a house sitter, and passes his time watching DVDs of classic movies and drinking heavily. This is all he wants out of life.He takes a job sitting a house in Hollywood. He arrives and is checking the place out when he's attacked by an apparently deranged woman who has been

This story contains a high octane charged sequence of events that grip you from the very first page and does not let down in momentum. The story has a great plot and some good old hard boiled characters, elements that pan out into a solid thriller. There is loads of tension and intrigue, the writer displays craftsmanship in weaving this story together.One actress finds herself the target of a hot pursuit and to be cleaned, eradicated. A house-sitter, fixer kind of guy who has connections with FB...

One reason I never bought into any of the conspiracy theories that swirl around celebrity deaths like Princess Di or Marilyn Monroe is that they always seem to be based on the notion that there are these shadowy figures that can orchestrate murder on demand and cover it up without leaving a trace. Hell, when Nixon wanted the Watergate black bagged, he had to use incompetent bastards like G. Gordon Liddy and a ragtag group of Cuban exiles, and he was president of the United States. If there reall...

Meet Charlie Hardie, former cop, resident badass, coming to housesit in a neighborhood near you. He gets drunk and watches old movies as often as Congress runs a budget deficit, before he meets Lane Madden, a chick with more attitude and gumption and fighting ability than the top UFC contender, and gets tossed in the middle of the ring with a group of coldblooded killers. Lane’s tough, and she’s not about to take attitude from anyone, including a group of hit men and one woman who want nothing m...

FUN AND GAMES is a riot. A full-blown wildfire burning beneath a raging thunderstorm blast of adrenaline-fueled action with a strong dose of black hole-level darkness. Unexpected story twists that made me rewind the pages and read them again just to be sure I'd read what I thought I'd read - that's how surprised I was at some of the plot decisions made by the author. A rocking good time that will also leave you uncertain at just what will happen next. I'm eager to check out the next two books in...

“The world will run you down and slam a tire over your exploding skull and not even wonder what it had just hit.”Duane Swierczynski's Fun & Games is the kind of wild hardboiled action thrill ride of a book that people only dream of creating. It's the first in a trilogy of books about a seemingly indestructible down on his luck noir protagonist type character. Charlie Hardie is a burnt out ex-law enforcement consultant determined to drink himself in to oblivion over some atrocity in his past that...

Blurb.........Mulholland Books presents... FUN AND GAMESNUMBER OF ACCIDENTAL DEATHS PER YEARBy suffocation: 3,300By poisoning: 8,600STAGED BY PROFESSIONALS: You have no idea.Ex-cop Charlie Hardie's latest job is guarding an isolated mansion in LA's Hollywood Hills. But it comes with an unwanted guest - a D-list actress who says she's being hunted by professional hitmen.Charlie thinks she's just high and paranoid.But he's wrong.The killers are real.They've tracked her to the house. And they're no...

Aptly named Fun & Games, I loved this book because it was just that, fun and games FAST times two. It was also a Shamus winner. Now that should catch some eyes for those of us book nerds who follow such award nominations and winners. It wasn't high octane either, it was jet fueled and at times I thought the book was going to jettison out of my hands it went so fast. Haven't had this much fun reading since Laurence Shames and Joey's move from New York City to Key West to romp in the sun and surf....

Hollywood has its own mythology, or maybe it's just really good at revamping the mythologies of other places with a lot of glitz. In either case, Duane Swierczynski has concocted a novel, the first of a trilogy it turns out, that taps into the kind of conspiracy-laden thrill rides only Hollywood could call its own.Take a washed-out Hollywood starlet, Lane Madden, and put her behind the wheel of a fast car in one of the richer sections of L.A., then have a crew of killers try to run her off the r...

A high-speed chase down the Hollywood Hills.....and, you're the girl at the wheel of the car. No brakes? The car has no brakes and, neither does this storyB-movie actress Lane Madden is next on the list of THE ACCIDENT PEOPLE.Have you ever wondered what becomes of screenwriters and film technicians....when their careers are over...or, they've fallen out of favor....Scripted "accidents".....posed "hits"??? Lane is next on The List.....through various nefarious events (exploding gas mains and biot...

Well that was a fun read - talk about non stop action !And pretty near impossible to predict what is going to happen next - some great twists in the story.I could go for some more of that - so on to the next one in the trilogy...

I can only suspend so much disbelief.I also am not in the mood for a continuous series.There were some interesting ideas,but too farfetched.

House Sitter with a difference Charlie Hardie thought he'd left the world of bloodshed and mayhem behind after leaving Philadelphia along with his former occupation as police consultant. What seems as another cushy detail sitting for an out of town Hollywood type quickly turns red with the encounter of movie starlet (albeit B-Movie starlet) Lane Madden imposing as a squatter and demanding he leaver her alone while being fixated on a collective 'them' trying to kill her. Soon enough, Hardie's got...