Monday, April 27, 2015

Canary -- Duane Swierczynski

Sarie Holland is an abstemious college honors student.  Her dad is a drug counselor, and she has a nosy kid brother.  She's just an ordinary kid, though smarter than most, and not smart enough to avoid one big mistake.  Leaving a party, she drives a cute boy, D., to "pick up a book."  What he's picking up isn't a book, and Sarie finds herself in the clutches of a cop named Wildey after D leaves drugs in her car and flees.  Wildey threatens Sarie with jail if she doesn't turn informant for him.  She thinks she can do one job and get free of him.  Little does she know.

Let's stop here.  If you didn't read this article, you should read it now.  When I talked to Duane not long ago, he said he hadn't read the article, but his book pretty much follows the pattern laid out in it.  And if you think it's implausible that teenager would be turned into an informant by the cops, then here's a recent article that will change your mind.  (Update on the recent article is here.)

Now back to our regularly scheduled review.  Complications ensue.  People die.  Sarie's nosy brother starts to wonder what's going on with his sister.   Some very bad people take an interest in Sarie and her activities.  And how do you keep up a college career and take exams when you're being a CI for some cop?  That's not all that's going on in Canary, but if you've read any of Swierczynski's previous books, you know that he can juggle a lot of plots without dropping one. 

Part of the book is told by Sarie in the form of journal entries addressed to her dead mother.  Part is in third person.  The parts work together and are perfectly integrated into a smooth whole.  There's some of Swierczynski's wild humor and wild action, and it's all good.

The book would seem to be set up for a sequel, but at the moment there isn't one planned.  I'm hoping to see one eventually, though because Sarie's a great character and the book is great fun.  Check it out.

7 comments:

Deb said...

As a mother of teenagers, I can't tell you how scary this extremely plausible scenario is. Yikes!

Unknown said...

When you read the article about Mississippi, it becomes even scarier.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Great articles. I had the book from the library but only read a little before I had to return it. As soon as I whittle down the pile I'll get it out again.

Jeff

Anonymous said...

Mark said. This is very disturbing, here in Tallahassee in 2008 a young woman, Rachel Hoffman, was coerced by police to set up a phony drug sting. Her resulting death has resulted in Rachel's law severely restricting the police's use of untrained informants. It seems that Mississippi is heading down the same path.

Unknown said...

Sure looks that way.

Anonymous said...

Mark said: I missed the first article, which does mention Rachel Hoffman before commenting. At any rate more states need to consider passing similar laws that protect young kids from over zealous cops.

Gerard said...

Dang, I forgot to order this. Thanks for the reminder.