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Vanessa Michael Munroe is certainly an unusual character. The daughter of African missionaries, she split of from her family during rebellious teenage years, becoming the invaluable assistant to a local "trader" and feared legend amng the locals for her near-supernatural skills, which include speaking 22(!) languages, the ability to disguise herself as a man or a woman and military-plus weapons handling. Oh, and she can dislocate her thumb so she can slip out of handcuffs. All will come into play on her latest mission: tracking down the daughter of an oil tycoon, who vanished, several years before, somewhere in the wilds of Central Africa. They don't even know in which country. Needle in a haystack? Child's play for Munroe, because gathering and making sense of information is what she does. However, it's not long before it's apparent someone does not want her to succeed - which simply makes Munroe's interest personal, as she does not take well to attempts on her life. The obvious comparison - present in just about every review - is to Lisbeth Salander: both are severely damaged by their pasts, but have leveraged this into becoming really good at their work. And both are better at that, than the "people" part of life, and as a result, are left on the outside of humanity, looking in, unable to form lasting, honest relationships. This book, however, is told in the first person, giving a clearer glimpse into the abyss of a "heroic sociopath" - or, in Munroe's case, possibly even psychopath, as she kills with scarcely a thought more than a petunia-like, "Oh, no: not again..." The absolute depths are finally exposed when someone close to her is killed, and it's not a place you want to be. It's certainly a page-turner: I read the first half on a flight from Phoenix to Boston, and was keen for the return flight so I could finish it off. The locations are not your usual thrillery ones, even if I don't think Equatorial Guinea will be on my list of wanted destinations. The downside is, this is a (generally) great character in search of a better plot. Motives remain murky and dubiously plausible, even after the final exposition, and in the light of this, too many actions happen simply because they're necessary to the plot, rather than spring believably from those involved and their goals. Though I'm still very keen to see where Munroe goes from here (though I could happily lose the androgyny, personally), and this has the potential for an absolutely kick-ass movie - damned if I can figure out who might play the heroine though. [February 2012] |
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