Canary by Duane Swierczynski

Summary: Sarie Holland is a 19 year old honors student with outstanding conduct.  She knows how to work a party to fit in without having to suffer the consequences of truly partying.  When a cute guy approaches her at a party, she finds herself driving him to a friends house to pick up a book.  She quickly realizes it is not a book he after, but drugs.  After he picks up his "book," she is pulled over by a cop while she wait for him to grab some food.  The officer finds the drugs in her back seat and she is forced into becoming a confidential informant or give up her friend.  She must keep this a secret and the last person she would ever want to find it is her father.  They are all struggling after the loss of her mother and this is the last thing she wants to add to his or her younger brother's plate.  Can Sarie be successful as a CI or will she have to reveal the identity of her friend?

Impression:  (adult read) This book was another GREAT read for me.  Although it wasn't the best book I have ever read, it had so much action and I didn't want to put it down until I was done.  It is full of colorful language which I am typically opposed to, but I imagine it is appropriate for the scene this book is set in.  

Reviews:

For nearly a decade, Swierczynski (Point & Shoot, 2013) has been firing off adrenaline-fueled, ultraviolent thrillers that mix pulp fiction, sci-fi, crime, and fantasy into a unique brew. Canary is a change-up, a riveting conventional thriller about Philadelphia’s drug trade; Philly cops, both righteous and corrupt; and Serafina “Sarie” Holland. Sarie is a very smart and conscientious 17-year-old college freshman who innocently agrees to give a friend a ride and ends up forced to be a confidential informant for narcotics cop Ben Wildey. She risks jail by refusing to give up her friend, but she convinces Wildey she can lead him to other dealers. Her efforts toss her into an escalating war over control of the city’s drug trade, corrupt cops, and some of Swierczynski’s signature spectacular violence—and all this goes down as Sarie’s semester finals loom. Sarie is a luminous character, and she’s part of a realistically imagined family grieving over the death of a wife and mother. Her father is bending under the weight of their loss. Her insightful 12-year-old brother, Marty, broods silently and intuits that Sarie is in big trouble. Swierczynski’s Philly is painted in dark and gritty photorealistic detail and includes some hilarious bits of historical arcana. Memorable characters, suspense, a native’s portrait of a fascinating city, eruptions of spectacular violence—fans of hard-edged crime will love this one.

Canary. Rev. of Canary by Duane Swierczynski. Booklist. Vol. 111, No.9. 1 January 2015. Web. 10 July 2016.

When police coerce a whip-smart college student into being a confidential informant, they get more than they bargained for. In a long, rambling and cheeky letter to her mother, Sarie Holland describes her arrest and incarceration on a drug charge. A more prosaic account from the perspective of undercover narcotics officer Benjamin F. Wildey counterpoints segments of Sarie's letter. Wildey gives his catch a cheap burner phone and demands that she become his informant or face harsh prosecution. Shrewd Sarie immediately begins living a double life, lying to her clueless father as she fields persistent texts from Wildey and behaves with uncharacteristic abruptness. Wildey feels guilty but not guilty enough to cut Sarie loose. Meanwhile, Sarie's suspicious brother, Marty, notes the change in his sister's behavior and wonders what she could be up to. Soon after Wildey sets Sarie up to trap users with fake packets of drugs, Sarie, chafing under the officer's control, starts to revolt in little ways. A close brush with mortality pulls her up short. Sensing her skittishness, Wildey begins to monitor her more closely. As the two seem headed for a showdown, Sarie's family begins probing the situation, which can't possibly end well. Inventive Swierczynski, author of the popular Charlie Hardie trilogy (Point and Shoot, 2013, etc.), breathes fresh life into a familiar plot with shifting perspectives, sly humor, puckish chapter titles and a crackerjack pace.

Canary.  Rev. of Canary by Duane Swierczynski.  Kirkus Reviews. 1 January 2015. Web. 10 July 2016.