The Informationist

The Informationist (forthcoming from Crown) is, simply put, one of the best fiction debuts I've read in a very long time. Taylor Stevens has crafted a thriller that will keep you guessing until the last page, populated with a cast of unforgettable characters. The major one (and the one I'm guessing we'll see again soon) is Vanessa Michael Munroe, known for her take-no-prisoners style and her ability to get the job done, whatever it happens to be.

Stevens' book offers a well-crafted plot, in which Munroe is sent off into the wilds of equatorial West Africa to find out what happened to a Texas oilman's missing daughter, only to find herself the hunted rather than the hunter. Betrayed by those closest to her, but determined to find out the show more truth behind the girl's disappearance, Munroe (joined by her former drug- and gun-smuggling mentor Francisco Beyard and Houston security consultant Miles Bradford) dives back into the mystery. The rest, you'll have to read for yourself.

Good stuff - I suspect we'll be hearing quite a bit about The Informationist, and I'll be watching closely for the next Vanessa Munroe tale.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2011/01/book-review-informationist.html show less

Greatest disservice to this book would be to compare it to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

True, both characters are female with special set of skills but that is where all similarities end. Lisbeth is not violent person in terms of uncontrollable rage - she behaves like an outcast but she is not self-destructive. As a matter of fact she is working very hard not to be in harms way and even if she gets herself in trouble she will try to find a workaround. She is pretty cold with exacting vengeance and she applies very simple math - me or them.

Vanessa on other hand is slightly more .... crazy. This woman has serious mental issues. The moment she starts tripping she only sees red - very much like berserkers of old. It does not matter show more what happens to her in that moment, she just moves in with whatever is at hand and wipes the floor with everyone (while collecting few "trophies" in process). And she is always playing with peoples minds to get them into fight because she enjoys that.

Both characters are damaged in terms of child traumas but unlike Lisbeth, Vanessa decided to leave her parents and roam the world where she did find the company of pretty messy people. And here we come to second point - Lisbeth is lone wolf, most of data collection (hacking etc) she does alone. She knows people but she needs to refund them for their services. Vanessa on the other hand relies on friends to assist her with issues at hand. And although Vanessa uses technology her main job is still hands-on espionage, break in and entry, standard detective work (interviews) and/or extraction of data by ... other means (again when she flips).

So in general, very similar but again completely different characters. And I love adventures of both. I enjoyed the first novel in Munroe series and will be reading more.

Highly recommended for all action and thriller aficionados. show less

A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel
By Taylor Stevens
Random House 324 pgs
978-0-307-71710-8
Rating: Read This Book!+ (this is a 4.5 of 5 for readers insisting on a rational rating system)

The Informationist is stunning. It roars like a freight train and sneaks like a cat through 3 continents and some half-dozen countries. There are mercenaries and missionaries, diplomats and gangsters in uniform, Texas oil tycoons and presidents, sacrifice and avarice, revenge and justice.

Meet Vanessa Michael Munroe. We very seldom get to meet a female character in any genre who breaks the rules, all of them. Her past is shady, her future precarious. She reminds me of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon on estrogen and without the ethical ruminating. She is a brilliant show more chameleon and physically fearless. She's got skills. Munroe is fierce.

Munroe's specialty is information. Governments and corporations need information and hire her to get it and they pay handsomely. Information on elections, coupes, espionage both national and business, trade secrets, you name it. Everyone wants the inside skinny for a leg up on the competition. Mainly this boils down to money. Information = money.

The information Munroe is hired to find is the whereabouts of the daughter of a Texas oil tycoon, Richard Burbank of Titan Oil. His daughter Emily went missing in Africa 4 years ago. Munroe grew up in Africa and understands that returning to the scene of her past could be problematic. Add Miles Bradford to the mix. He is a former (?) mercenary Burbank sends along to keep an eye on Munroe. Add to the mix Francisco Beyard, a gunrunner (among other things) from her African past who loves her and is a little angry that she disappeared 9 years ago. Hint: Munroe had to get "out of Africa." Ha ha. Sorry. I find very little to quibble about in The Informationist. In fact only one thing: Miles Bradford seemed to be superfluous a good deal of the time. However this doesn't weigh down the plot in any way.

The Informationist is Taylor Stevens first book and I am so excited to be able to read more. Her next Vanessa Michael Munroe novel, The Innocent, will hit stores this month. Even better, she is currently working on the third story. I confidently and strongly recommend this one. Ms. Stevens has created something special here and I, for one, am grateful. You will be too.

(FYI Taylor Stevens is a Texas author. Yay!)

For more on the author: http://www.taylorstevensbooks.com/author.php

For the publisher: http://www.randomhouse.com/ show less

First Line: This is where he would die.

Corporations, heads of state, private clients-- anyone who can pay her rates-- want the kind of information that only Vanessa "Michael" Munroe can find. Born in central Africa, Munroe's past is as shadowy as the sources of her information.

Four years ago the daughter of a Texas oil billionaire vanished in Africa. He's never given up the search, and now he wants Munroe to try to find the young woman. It's not her usual line of work, but she can't resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery, Munroe finds herself betrayed and left for dead-- but those who don't want her to succeed have no idea how powerful her determination and will to survive really are.

For those of you who read according to show more the "Fifty Page Rule," be forewarned: the first fifty pages of The Informationist are a bit slow going until Stevens has set her scene and hit her stride. Once that happens, hang on to your hats.

The political instability of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea as well as the unpredictable character of Vanessa Munroe make for an explosive combination in this book. When everything and everyone is potentially lethal, the reader is never certain where the next threat is coming from.

Other than the slow beginning, the only thing that really bothered me was the identity of the bad guy. Whether we admit it or not, most readers of crime fiction and thrillers want a puzzle to pit their wits against. In most cases that puzzle is who done it, and the usual first question we armchair detectives ask ourselves is "Who stands to benefit the most from this death?" Perhaps because I'm such a cynical creature, I found the answer all too easy to discover.

After reading this book, I did a little research. For those of you who are not familiar with Taylor Stevens' background, you may want to visit her website. She's every bit as interesting as her fictional character. (In fact, I'd give Stevens the edge in the fascination quotient.) As for Vanessa Munroe, I discovered that many were pairing her with another unpredictable, highly intelligent, super secretive character-- Lisbeth Salander. I've read and loved all three of Stieg Larsson's books, but I did not pair his character with Taylor's as I read. I will admit that there are similarities, but one is not a copy of the other. I wouldn't want to have either one of these women infuriated with me; there's no hole deep enough to hide from Lisbeth or Vanessa!

As a lover of exotic locations and strong, unpredictable characters, I recommend this book. I look forward to reading the next Vanessa "Michael" Munroe adventure. show less

Vanessa "Michael" Munroe has a very successful career gathering information.

If you are an individual, a corporation, or a government that needs information, she is the best you can hire. She can blend into another culture, pose as all sorts of different characters and get the real information, see the hidden connections that tie the facts together and come up with the information that those who hire her will use to base their decisions on. She has an incredible, natural ability with languages, is very clever and is darn handy with a knife when she has to be.

Finding missing people is not her usual job. But when she gets an offer, for a huge amount of money, to try and find the missing daughter of billionaire oilman Richard Burbank, she show more is intrigued. Emily disappeared four years ago while traveling as a tourist in Africa. He has hired team after team to try and find out what happen, if she is alive or dead, but each one came up clueless. Munroe is his last chance, he say, to find the truth of what happen.

For Munroe, the trip where the clues lead, to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, will be a sort of a journey home. That is if she felt that she had a home. But it is the place she was born, to missionary parents, and it is the place she lived until nine years ago, when she killed a man and left the mercenary smuggler she had been working with. It is a past filled with terrible memories and a past that has left her with so many numerous scars, both physical and emotional, that at times she can barely keep the darkness and rage from overtaking her.

"Returning to the past was inevitable. Somehow in the last nine years she'd managed to stay upright on a tightrope stretched between brilliance and insanity, the blackness of the abyss always with er, leaving her sometimes wondering if letting go might in the end be easiest of all."

But soon after she gets there, things start to go very wrong. She finds herself drugged, shot and thrown off a boat and only because of her skills is able to narrowly survive. She finds herself alone and injured, in a wild and lawless nation, not knowing who betrayed her and who she can trust.

And what does a missing young American girl have to do with any of this.

If you read anything about this book, you can not miss the comparisons between Munroe and Lisbeth Salander. Yes, they are both androgynous, damaged young women with deadly skills and great intelligence. But this is no Larsson/Salander knockoff. No, Munroe is very much her own character. Her feelings and emotions, her anger, her fears seem so real that you can not help but think that they came from the actual emotions of the author, especially when you know the author's own story. Because I must admit that when I first read about this book, it was the author's story that I found as intriguing as the story outlined.

Stevens was raised in a cult with little formal education, and her own life story would no doubt make a fascinating book of it's own. That this is her first book, written with so little formal education, makes it even more remarkable. Because this is a very well written book. The dialogue is great, the characters are great and the plot, while yes, a bit over the top at times but hey folks, this is a thriller, will grab you and pull you to the last page and a surprising and satisfying ending.

Munroe is a great character. Maybe a bit too emotional for my taste because I like my borderline sociopaths to be a tiny bit more sociopathic. Oh please Ms. Stevens, do not make her too nice!! Keep the edge sharp! Still, I will be very interested to read Ms. Stevens next book, The Innocent, that will be out next year. I hope we have a lot more deep and dark secrets to find out about Vanessa and see what rip roaring adventure she will get us roped into.

And you can not read this book but start to wonder who they will cast in the movie, because this would make one heck of a great movie! show less

On the strength of glowing reviews and publishers' over-the-top PR, I've purchased four debut novels in as many weeks, all of them categorised as 'magnificent, original, outstanding, superb' etc.

Two of those I couldn't finish. Derivative, boring, repetitive. One I did finish but only through sheer willpower.

But _this_ book was the real thing. An amazing debut novel coming out of nowhere. Almost perfect -- just a couple of plot holes, one major, one minor, but both easily overlooked in the adrenaline rush of page-turning action and gut-wrenching characterisation.

What an amazing heroine Ms Stevens has created. Totally convincing and totally unforgettable.

Easily the best thriller I've read this year.

Lisbeth Salander meets Sydney Bristow in the heart of darkness

Positive word of mouth is a double-edged sword. Take The Informationist, for example. Positive reviews in the publishing trades are what first caught my eye and made me want to read this debut by an unknown author. But those same reviews significantly raised my expectations, perhaps unrealistically. I note this, because while ultimately I enjoyed The Informationist, it took me a while to get into the book. While undeniably a plot-driven action-adventure thriller, it’s really so much about character.

Specifically, it’s about Vanessa Michael Munroe, the eponymous Informationist. When asked about her work, she replies, “I go into developing countries and gather show more information—usually abstract and obscure—and turn it into something a corporation can use to make business decisions.” That would be a highly sanitized version of what she does. Munroe is a chameleon, changing back and forth from Vanessa Munroe to Michael Munroe as identity and gender suit her needs. She’s a harsh character, and really took some getting used to. Even now, I couldn’t describer as the least bit likable. She has no warmth, no apparent humor, and makes few attachments. Her code of morality is… situational. So much of my response to this novel had to do with my response to her, and as my attitude became more accepting, my interest in the tale being told expanded.

The core of the story is simple. Emily Burbank disappeared in a remote area of the African jungle four years ago, when she was in her late teens. One of her traveling companions turned up catatonic in a European mental institution. The fate of her other companion is unknown. After all this time, there is little hope of finding Emily alive. Nonetheless, her oil billionaire step-father has spent millions on the search. This is not Vanessa Munroe’s area of expertise, but she knows the region and the languages and is a brilliant analyst. Munroe is a last ditch effort for the closure that Richard Burbank seeks.

Of course, there’s more to it than that, but that’s enough to know going in. Most of the action takes place in Africa. Some locations were so off-the-beaten-path that I wasn’t sure they existed before a Google search. Stevens does a great job of rendering the setting, but don’t expect a jungle adventure full of exotic natives and deadly beasts. No, the scariest creatures in this book are the men. In that respect, it’s probably more realistic than many an African adventure. The story moves well enough and is plenty engaging once you get into it, but I can’t say it had that breathless, can’t-turn-the-pages-fast-enough quality that I do so love. On the other hand, I think this is a smarter, more substantive tale than many of those books.

In the end, it really does come back to character. Munroe is cut from a bit of the same cloth as Steig Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander with a dash of Alias’s Sydney Bristow. She’s impressive as hell, more than a little scary, and deeply flawed. It was interesting meeting her, but the jury is out on whether I want to spend more time in her company. show less