Duane Swierczynski must be the Indianapolis 500 pace car of crime fiction, except his gig isn’t for show, and I don’t know who else can keep up. His novels’ pages number into the low hundreds, yet his words work at such a feverish clip, they feel like a fraction of the length.

SEVERANCE PACKAGE is his latest, and rarely do modern thrillers get this high concept: High atop a downtown Philly skyscraper, boss David Murphy has summoned seven of his valued employees to a mandatory Saturday-morning meeting. Once assembled, he tells them the building is on lockdown, and there’s no escaping. They can either die by downing a Mickey-slipped mimosa or he’ll gladly shoot them in the head.

Suffice to say, the firm of Murphy, Knox & Associates is not going to land on one of those local “Best Places to Work” lists. The reason for this sudden round of permanent pink slips? The firm is actually a secret front company for a government intelligence agency, but it’s being shut down, so things have to be kept tidy, lest leaks be risked. Certainly HR would have a problem with this.

It seems that Mr. Murphy has taken the tenets of Sun Tzu’s THE ART OF WAR a little too literally, turning his office into a scenario akin to the cast of THE APPRENTICE embroiled in BATTLE ROYALE. He’s even got a to-do — or is that to-die? — checklist, on a crumpled fax, but his workforce isn’t going to go down without a fight.

In fact, Swierczynski drops a twist in the third chapter that lets the reader know all bets are off in this firecracker of a story. I’d introduce you to the seven staffers marked for early retirement, but most of them are not who they appear, so I’ll leave all the surprises just that. But the ringer they’re put through involves stairwells booby-trapped with a deadly nerve gas, plate-glass windows rigged to fall out easily to the cement below, and a whole tray of various Pepperidge Farm cookies.

That last bit is just one of the author’s many humorous touches (another is that a guy is saved from certain death by a McDonald’s-induced bout of intestinal distress), but make no mistake: This is an action novel that laughs at the time clock and makes itself quite productive. It all may prove exhausting, so take a breather midway through to be alert straight through to the brilliant, ball-busting end.

I don’t know why the book contains the occasional full-page illustration by Dennis Calero, but they bristle with a tone-screen Pop Art touch and add to the PACKAGE’s unconventional kick. So do the quotes that open each chapter with a keen sense of irony, from business giants such as Donald Trump, Lee Iacocca and Sam Walton. And then there’s the one from hotelier Conrad Hilton, which accurately sums of Swierczynski’s go-and-don’t-stop approach: “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BLONDE by Duane Swierczynski
• THE WHEELMAN by Duane Swierczynski