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Go-Between by Lisa Brackmann
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Go-Between (edition 2016)

by Lisa Brackmann (Author)

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2021,091,121 (3.5)1
"Emily runs a successful bistro in Humboldt County, California, where she lives with her handsome boyfriend, Jeff, a volunteer firefighter. A lot of her best customers are in the cannabis business, but so what? It's true that the bistro was funded by drug money, and sure, firefighting isn't really Jeff's main job--that would be flying Humboldt's finest weed to out-of-state customers. And sure, he isn't really Emily's boyfriend, more like the guy she's stuck with by circumstance. Actually, his name isn't Jeff, it's Danny; and Emily's real name is Michelle Mason, although no one can ever know that. She's on the run from her past--which has just caught up with her in its ugliest form: Gary, an ex-CIA and black ops agent who got her and Danny into this whole mess, and who Michelle should have killed when she had the chance. When Gary shows up at Michelle's restaurant the same night Danny is arrested by the DEA during what should have been a routine flight, Michelle knows they've been set up. Danny's life is on the line: he's dangling bait in a maximum-security Houston jail, prey to Gary and whatever shadowy powers Gary works for. Gary will help Michelle out--get Danny out of this jam--if she'll just do him one little favor: take a job in Houston working for the figurehead of a multimillion-dollar anti-crime nonprofit. But Michelle knows whatever she's getting into isn't what it seems. All she can do is hope she figures out what Gary's real endgame is before she--or someone close to her--pays the ultimate price. Lisa Brackmann has written a chilling and thought-provoking thriller that reveals the unsavory link between marijuana legalization and the big-money politics of the United States' private prison industry"--… (more)
Member:bfister
Title:Go-Between
Authors:Lisa Brackmann (Author)
Info:Soho Crime (2016), 384 pages
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Go-Between by Lisa Brackmann

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Reposted from Reviewing the Evidence.

Emily runs a nice restaurant in northern California while her partner, Jeff, works as a pilot and firefighter. Actually, things are a little more complicated than that. In a previous life, Emily was Michelle Mason, who has had to create a new identity after her husband left her a widow with no money and a pile of bad debts. She met Jeff when escaping from an unscrupulous CIA agent who runs black ops funded with drug money. That's complicated, too: Jeff currently moonlights by delivering his county's local harvest – cannabis – to buyers, but before that his name was Danny and he was a CIA operative who grew disillusioned and barely got out with his life.

Emily worries their carefully constructed life could fall apart if Jeff keeps working on the shady side of the law. He wants to do a favor for a friend and make one last big score. You can probably guess how that turns out.

Soon Emily has a choice: leave Jeff to his fate and go on the run, or resume her previous identity and do a favor for Gary, the shady and well-connected CIA officer, who just wants her to babysit the figurehead for a charitable foundation for a while. This photogenic woman, once raped by criminals who murdered her husband and child, is now is the face of a foundation that raises money for victims and is pushing legislation in California that is of particular interest to the prison-industrial complex. She is also heavily medicated, often tipsy, and not aware of how her foundation is being used. Michelle has to keep her happy, but without intending it, she awakens the woman's interest in life and in her foundation's work, and that won't make Michelle's CIA handler happy. You probably won't guess how that turns out.

In her previous books, Lisa Brackmann has taken strong female protagonists into exotic places and plenty of danger. Here, in what may be her most accomplished thriller yet, she offers readers an equally strong sense of place in three locations: a damp, chilly fogbound part of Northern California, damp and hot Houston, where we visit wealthy homes and boardrooms with Michelle and the county jail with Emily, switching between identities to try and hold things together, and finally southern California, where the babysitting job grows even more complicated. Brackmann turns the same bright, inquisitive light she used to illuminate the contradictions of modern China on American politics, the security apparatus, the surveillance state, and the ties between the prison industry and the war on drugs. Though the protagonist previously appeared in GETWAWAY (2012), this novel can be read on its own.

Brackmann takes the noir formula – things start out badly for a hapless hero and keep getting worse – and gives it a feminist reboot. Michelle/Emily is a character who is put in an impossible situation with nothing but her intelligence, survival instincts, and a moral compass to show her the way. With her as a guide, accompanied by a cast of well-drawn characters, it's a fun, smart, and fascinating trip.
  bfister | Jan 1, 2017 |
I like Lisa Brackman's writing and I really liked 'Go-Between', but I would've enjoyed it even more had I read her previous work where the cast of characters had been introduced. By the end of Go-Between, I was pretty sure I understood the various relationships and had at least an inkling of what had happened in the past. However, it was pretty irritating to spend the majority of the book wondering about who these people really were.

It's a pretty tricky plot. Ellen runs a little upscale hippie restaurant in northern California. Danny, her significant other, takes the occasional job helping pot smugglers- apparently a big business in that part of the country. Unfortunately, this time his luck runs out, coincidentally at the same time a man from Ellen's past, the mysterious Gary, pays her a threatening visit. Had I read the previous book in what appears to be a series, I'd would've had a better chance of understanding what was going on, but I digress....

So, it turns out Gary, who has black ops government ties, was behind Danny's arrest and incarceration in order to pressure Ellen into helping him keep an eye on a woman who operates a group that opposes pot legalization and other social/legal issues. The remainder of the story is involved with her 'spying' on her employer's charity, trying to get her boyfriend out of the joint, figuring out how/why Gary is doing all of this to them, keeping her various identities and cellphones straight, and basically staying alive for another day. The pressure and almost claustrophobic feeling of the book increases as you go along, to the point where something has to give. It does, with a conclusion that's considerably less bloody than expected.

Brackmann's writing is nothing special, except that she seems to have a knack for matching her technique with the pace of the action. She does a good job with dialogue and the action sequences are believable. The powers of the mysterious Gary seem a little overdone, but from what we've learned about NSA capabilities and so on over the last couple years, maybe they're not.

Go-Between is a really good thriller but I'd recommend reading Getaway, where the major characters are introduced, first. ( )
  gmmartz | Dec 31, 2016 |
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"Emily runs a successful bistro in Humboldt County, California, where she lives with her handsome boyfriend, Jeff, a volunteer firefighter. A lot of her best customers are in the cannabis business, but so what? It's true that the bistro was funded by drug money, and sure, firefighting isn't really Jeff's main job--that would be flying Humboldt's finest weed to out-of-state customers. And sure, he isn't really Emily's boyfriend, more like the guy she's stuck with by circumstance. Actually, his name isn't Jeff, it's Danny; and Emily's real name is Michelle Mason, although no one can ever know that. She's on the run from her past--which has just caught up with her in its ugliest form: Gary, an ex-CIA and black ops agent who got her and Danny into this whole mess, and who Michelle should have killed when she had the chance. When Gary shows up at Michelle's restaurant the same night Danny is arrested by the DEA during what should have been a routine flight, Michelle knows they've been set up. Danny's life is on the line: he's dangling bait in a maximum-security Houston jail, prey to Gary and whatever shadowy powers Gary works for. Gary will help Michelle out--get Danny out of this jam--if she'll just do him one little favor: take a job in Houston working for the figurehead of a multimillion-dollar anti-crime nonprofit. But Michelle knows whatever she's getting into isn't what it seems. All she can do is hope she figures out what Gary's real endgame is before she--or someone close to her--pays the ultimate price. Lisa Brackmann has written a chilling and thought-provoking thriller that reveals the unsavory link between marijuana legalization and the big-money politics of the United States' private prison industry"--

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