American Spy - Lauren Wilkinson

Fiction

Rating: 7.5/10

On the first page of this book Marie, a former FBI agent, confronts a man with a gun in her house while searching out the noise she heard in the dead of night.  A noise she is sure is nothing more than a figment of her sleep deprived imagination. After a brief struggle, she ends up bruised and battered and the stranger ends up with a bullet in his brain.  

The story of how Marie finds herself in this position and what she intends to do about it never once let’s up from this fast-paced start to its finish.  Landing at a safe place where she can plan her next steps, readers get more of the particulars through flashbacks framed as a letter Marie is writing to her sons.

This author packs a hell of a lot of plot into a relatively short book, fleshing out complex relationships and conflicted loyalties while never losing the underlying theme of love. And what it can drive us to do.  All without a single spy novel trope in sight.

A great line…”The only anger I ever expose to the world is through implication, by suggesting that I am on the brink of no longer being able to contain my fury.  That is what a women’s strength looks like when its palatable, like she is containing herself.”

Book Pairing(s): Secrets We Dept by Lara Prescott, The Coldest Warrior by Paul Vidich, The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen