The whole premise is unbelievable - our little narc barely knows the punk she's protecting, yet she does and, what's even more unbelievable, puts part of the blame on herself. No one who has worked this hard would do this. Then she compounds her insane decision by committing more crimes for him. In what universe? So that's the first and biggest problem. The second is the cop's treatment of her as a C.I. - he continually jeopardizes her status as a student which is the whole reason she will work as a C.I. If she loses her status his little canary shuts up. It makes no sense. Now he's practically gotten her killed and he's demanding she find some excuse to leave family movie night. A while later she meets him after an encounter that's left her visibly injured and he says nothing, does nothing. It makes no sense. Again I say, in what universe?

Now she's firing a Glock without a round in the chamber - no Mr. Author, squeezing the trigger again will not chamber a round. You need to rack the slide for that. All semi-automatic handguns work this way. Sigh, amateurs.

And then there's the little brother - WTF is up with his continuous spying on her? It's creepy and smacks heavily of author manipulation which I hate and which it turned out to be. Returned to audible. Removed other books by this author from my wishlist there, too. ( )

My new word for awesome is Canary. Man, the way Swiercyznski set this book up was just canary. The way he combined family drama, the folly of youth, high tension, and humor into a cracker-jack crime fiction plot was just damned canary. Making you tremble to turn the page because of your fear for what might happen to a main character, but making you turn that page anyway, is incredibly canary. Canary is just Canary.

Serafina Holland is picked up with with a bag of pills in her car. The police could give two cents about her. They want the guy Detective Wildey saw running away in the red pants, and they want him bad. But Serafina (Sarie) is not one to turn on a friend, even one she hardly knows. So to put the heat on Sarie, they tell her to avoid getting arrested, she's got to turn informant, Confidential Informant # 137, CI137, to be specific, and she'll be reporting to Wildey until she comes clean about red pants.

But Sarie is made of sterner stuff than they figured. And rather than turn on her red-panted friend, D, she decides that she'll just find other drug pushers to inform on, all while keeping her trusting father and her suspicious brother at bay, and while studying for five final exams. Sarie begins to cause mayhem in the Philadelphia drug world.

While Sarie has been added to the CI list, various other CI's are disappearing from Philadelphia at an alarming rate. And while Wildey is concerned for his young charge because he likes her spunk, he's also getting pushed from above to uncover the identity of red pants, and turn him into a CI. He also needs to find out why he's losing CI's, and make sure Sarie isn't the next to go missing.

This is just another outstanding book by Swierczynski. I don't know how he does it, but reading his books you always have the feeling you're on the downward side of a roller coaster with your heart in your throat and a laugh boiling up from your gut.

Early in Canary, Wildey is using the various and sundry items you might find on a diner table: salt and pepper, jelly packets, catsup and mustard tubs, to explain the various levels of the drug trade to Sarie. When Sarie later turns it around and tells Wildey she's got him a mustard tub, Wildey's puzzlement creates a guffaw moment, and is just one moment of many where you will appreciate Swierczynski's wit and creativity. ( )

Need a sequel!!! ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well written, with great characters. I was kept enthralled and didn't want to put it down. ( )

Great characters carry this book. Sarie Holland, an honors student, is in the wrong place and the wrong time with the wrong person. Pulled over by narcotics officer Ben Wildey, she becomes his latest CI. But with CIs dying all over the city, will she live long enough to get Wildey to the dealer he's after? ( )