The Informationist by Taylor Stevens, 307 pages, thriller.
Vanessa "Michael" Munroe is the woman you turn too when you need accurate, up-to-date information about all of the corridors of power in a country or a city you are unfamiliar with, and who in this land, you need to pay for access to these corridors. She is also a skilled fighter, good with a blade, a pro caliber rider of her Ducati and a heart breaker. She doesn't use a lot of these particular skills in this book, though they are all mentioned repeatedly, and I felt that was the story's weakness. We are told by the author what Michael is capable of, what she has done in the past, and how unstoppable she is. And then we watch her fall relatively easily to her opponents. Sure she escapes, and wins in the end, but it all ends up feeling contrived and a bit clumsy.
Michael, as described, with her grisly, icky past, and her mad skill set, is a compelling character. The setting of the book, mostly in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, is deftly done;the author does give a good sense of place. And the story itself sounds compelling-a billionaire's daughter disappeared four years ago somewhere around Cameroon and the trail has gone cold. Michael is offered an enormous amount of money by the billionaire dad, in what he sees as the last chance to find his daughter. Or so we are told. There is a lot right with this book, and it is only a little bit clunky, so you're left with the disappointment of knowing it might have been a great thriller. Stevens (who seems to have an interesting back-story herself, "born into the Children of God, raised in communes across the globe . . .") is writing the next thriller in this series, so there is hope of a great thriller to come, or several more pedestrian ones, who knows?
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Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, 382 pages.
