Hell and Gone by Duane SwierczynskiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sigh. This book was no where near as good as its predecessor.
I mean, it takes some doing to be even less realistic than Fun and GamesFun and Games but here you have it.
In summary (some mild spoilers for Fun and Games): After royally pissing off The Accident People, Charlie Hardie is abducted and sent to a bizzaro kafka-esque prison. There he interacts with the various guards the prisoners and plots his escape.*
So, one of the things that made Fun and Games so engaging was the claustrophobia invoked by the Hollywood Hills. Ironically, the claustrophobia induced by the prison where most of the action in the book takes place has the opposite effect. The Hollywood Hills are sufficiently accessible that new characters could be introduced or removed, where as the prison was static and as a result the stakes felt waaaaay lower.
Plus, I don't know, the way my brain is wired I'm willing to accept that there is a secret society of assassins that, for the right price, commit murders and make them look like accidents, but i'm not really willing to accept that those same people would own an underground prison**. Nor still would they at the very end.***
* Major pet peeve here: the conceit of the prison was _both_ bewilderingly obvious, and tremendously badly explained.
** (Mild Spoiler) Let alone one affiliated with a major university.
*** If you've read the book (or even the synopsis of the sequel you'll know what I mean.)
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