Severance Package
by Duane Swierczynski
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 80)
Read in June, 2008
By now you've read all the adjectives describing Swiercynski's latest creative spin on mayhem: graphically brutal, uber-violent, twisted, and over-the-top. And yeah, it reads like a comic book - or at least like Frank Miller's remarkably distorted gore fest in film: "Sin City". But I couldn't help feeling that in Swierczynski's beautifully warped mind "Severance Package" is his idea of a love story - a totally off-the-rails dissection of love gone bad in ways that we mere mor...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Like this review?
yes
(3 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
The latest in a loose series that started with THE WHEEL MAN, Duane Swierczynski continues peeling off the layers of the secret organization known as "CI6."
Jamie DeBroux reports to work at the end of paternity leave for a "management meeting." There, his boss reveals that they are the front company for a super-secret intelligence agency. The company is being shut down, and to protect national security, everyone in the room is to be killed. They have two choices. If th...more
Jamie DeBroux reports to work at the end of paternity leave for a "management meeting." There, his boss reveals that they are the front company for a super-secret intelligence agency. The company is being shut down, and to protect national security, everyone in the room is to be killed. They have two choices. If th...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in August, 2008
A cover operation for a nameless anti-terrorist organization obliterates in gruesome fashion.
Trying to review something like this is quite challenge. 263 pages of senseless violence done very effectively is still senseless violence. The only socially redeeming aspect of this is that the book takes the concept to an extreme that it is hard to imagine anyone exceeding:
"Molly screamed -- a howling geyser of rage that seemed like it had been building up under a mountain of composure. ...more
Trying to review something like this is quite challenge. 263 pages of senseless violence done very effectively is still senseless violence. The only socially redeeming aspect of this is that the book takes the concept to an extreme that it is hard to imagine anyone exceeding:
"Molly screamed -- a howling geyser of rage that seemed like it had been building up under a mountain of composure. ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Mindless violence thinly disguised with a plot about spies or something. Basically: the boss of a financial company that’s actually the cover for a CIA splinter cell—paging Arvin Sloane—has been given orders to liquidate his branch, so he calls a group of employees—some agents and some not—into work on a Saturday, tells them the doors have all been rigged with sarin gas, and gives them the option of drinking poisoned champagne or being shot in the head. But there’s a rogue rog...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2008
I love gallows humor. And Duane Swierczynski delivers. It's film noir meets TV's The Office, with a healthy dose of superfluous bedlam. The plot requires one to suspend disbelief, but it's over-the-top funny. Talk about taking fluid rounds (after-work drinking) a step to far, Duane does it with great style. I wonder if he'll be at B'Con 2008 and can I buy him a beer?
Now I'm the girl who likes Jason Statham, Sam Jackson, and F...more
Now I'm the girl who likes Jason Statham, Sam Jackson, and F...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
Any one who likes tea with their coffee
This was a lot of fun. I love the tagline of Severance Package: Ever want to kill your boss? Well guess what, the feeling is mutual.
Absolutely pitch perfect tagline for a fast paced romp in a cubical working and number crunching new world where homeland security has little idea of where its left nut is from its right nut.
This book is much praised, and while deservedly so, I don't know if I would call this so good Tarantino should direct it as, Booklist was quoted as sayi...more
Absolutely pitch perfect tagline for a fast paced romp in a cubical working and number crunching new world where homeland security has little idea of where its left nut is from its right nut.
This book is much praised, and while deservedly so, I don't know if I would call this so good Tarantino should direct it as, Booklist was quoted as sayi...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
An audacious, gory, action-packed yarn that feels more like a movie or a comic book than a novel. Duane Swierczynski knows how to pace a book, and this book flies by so fast that it almost feels as if it is occurring in real time and you are merely reading a transcript of the events as they happen. The story, like that of his previous novel The Blonde, requires an increasing amount of suspended disbelief as the novel progresses, and my problem with both books is their stories have too man...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Lurid, violent, cinematic, and big as day, it's kind of like a summer blockbuster in book form.
The book's premise is simple, yet inventive. One Saturday morning, David Murphy summons seven critical employees to the 36th floor of a blandly modern Philadelphia office park. There, he reveals to them that their office is a front company for a government intelligence agency that is being deactivated, and as a precautionary measure, he has to kill all of them before offing himself.
Now, David has g...more
The book's premise is simple, yet inventive. One Saturday morning, David Murphy summons seven critical employees to the 36th floor of a blandly modern Philadelphia office park. There, he reveals to them that their office is a front company for a government intelligence agency that is being deactivated, and as a precautionary measure, he has to kill all of them before offing himself.
Now, David has g...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
There's been a terrible mix-up. Author Duane Swierczynski seems to have submitted this screenplay to a publishing house, and it somehow got printed and marketed as a book.
Rife with cliche, Severance Package is about a wimp whose boss decides to kill his company. Cheesy, comic-book violence prevails, which I guess is supposed to be both fun and shocking.
Maybe it's because I just finished a *real* violent book reading with literary value (Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), but Severance Pac...more
Rife with cliche, Severance Package is about a wimp whose boss decides to kill his company. Cheesy, comic-book violence prevails, which I guess is supposed to be both fun and shocking.
Maybe it's because I just finished a *real* violent book reading with literary value (Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), but Severance Pac...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
2 comments
Severance Package is pretty much pure violence. There's no plot or point to the story other then killing from every characters possible. Although the fight scenes (and just about every other scene as well) are not very engaging, possibly because such violence doesn't translate to paper as well as it does on the big screen. One of the reviews on the back of the book states that it has "close-quarters Bourne-style mayhem," but it's not anywhere near the level of the Bourne trilogy. It is...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2008
Another GR reviewer wrote:
"There's been a terrible mix-up. Author Duane Swierczynski seems to have submitted this screenplay to a publishing house, and it somehow got printed and marketed as a book."
...and she is dead on. I like Swierczynski's sense of the absurd, and this book had the potential to be really fun in a day-at-work gets all crazy-ass psycho-violent sense. It did not live up to that potential...more
"There's been a terrible mix-up. Author Duane Swierczynski seems to have submitted this screenplay to a publishing house, and it somehow got printed and marketed as a book."
...and she is dead on. I like Swierczynski's sense of the absurd, and this book had the potential to be really fun in a day-at-work gets all crazy-ass psycho-violent sense. It did not live up to that potential...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in August, 2008
This book never really did it for me. Written by a former Editor-in-Chief of the Philly City Paper, it's billed as a hyper-kinetic new-crime novel, which it is, but it's also so wrapped up in being a hyperkinetic new-crime novel that it never bothers to give us characters we're interested in rooting for, at least not before they get killed. I would characterize this as less of a novel and more of a plot-exercise with faces attached.
That said, his premises and plotting were creative enough (i...more
That said, his premises and plotting were creative enough (i...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
Brian Wanamaker, Bryan Alexander
You might think you know where this book is going - the boss calls everyone in for an early morning meeting, only to inform them that they've been working for an intelligence agency and they all have to die now.
But you'd be wrong. This isn't an 80's action movie 'how will they escape' book. This is a viciously funny satire of corporate culture and the world of espionage both.
Swierczynski always keeps the reader guessing what will happen next (though the end was a bit of a horror movie cl...more
But you'd be wrong. This isn't an 80's action movie 'how will they escape' book. This is a viciously funny satire of corporate culture and the world of espionage both.
Swierczynski always keeps the reader guessing what will happen next (though the end was a bit of a horror movie cl...more
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
Read in July, 2008
A pretty fun little violent thriller about secret agents and trying to kill your co-workers. It starts out superbly and goes down hill a bit from there. It does end strongly though. Many of the negative reviews of this I've read say it's basically just a bunch or violence or an action movie accidentally turned into a book. Well, it's definitely influenced by such things, but there's a lot of interesting social commentaries and character development to be had. Plus, those who work in an office ty...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
Shallow but I enjoyed it anyways. Could have done a bit more plotwise & with the characters since both were very thin. But the hook (being trapped on a floor with your coworkers and having to murder your way out) was enjoyable enough that I didn't really care. That being said, the last 2 pages totally wrecked this book. I'm willing to stretch my disbelief only so far but when things are impossible/don't make any sense (but for the shock value), the whole thing is cheapened.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Everything you need after finishing Harlot's Ghost. Something to erase your brain to because there's no substance here, but it does serve its purpose, I still can't believe this author is the editor of a newspaper, he writes like a child.
If Quinten Tarentino's absurd fondness of violence fucked Michael Bay's vapid 'artistry' and birthed a mutant book-baby, this would probably be it.
If Quinten Tarentino's absurd fondness of violence fucked Michael Bay's vapid 'artistry' and birthed a mutant book-baby, this would probably be it.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2008
recommended to Inkdaub by:
Author recommended by Ed Brubaker via blogrecommends it for: Fans of Swierczynski's other books, fans of McKinty maybe
Pretty much exactly what I was expecting. I loved the beginning and I liked the end even though it was semi-expected. I like this author and find his books refreshing but I liked The Wheelman and The Blonde much more than this latest one. I think that the timeframe was a little too tight for my tastes. Still, I enjoyed it and will read more Swierczynski books no doubt.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
A ridiculously entertaining and silly little crime novel. Jamie Debroux is cursing the fact that his boss has called a meeting on Saturday. Next thing he knows the boss puts some cups of poison on the table and tells everybody they have a choice between drinking it and getting shot in the head. And on from there for 250 brisk, blood splattered pages.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
No one, really.
An awesome premise is ruined by hackneyed writing and more character twists than you can shake a stick at.
On the bright side, the action comes fast, furious, and never stops.
Reading this gave me hope that I could one day write a publishable action novel.
On the bright side, the action comes fast, furious, and never stops.
Reading this gave me hope that I could one day write a publishable action novel.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
