The Informationist

About 3-4 weeks ago, my friend, who is a Random House rep, brought me an advance reading copy of a new author called the Informationist.  She said that it received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and had already received several accolades and was being compared to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  She knew that I prefer suspense, but venture into all types of genres, so asked me to give it a read.

She gave me some background on the author, that seemed a little unusual.  Taylor Stevens was held in a cult until her early twenties and finally was able to escape the torment that she lived in for years.  She created stories and an imaginary world to escape in when times were especially hard for her.  After escaping and reinventing her life, she now resides in Texas.

The Informationist refers to Vanessa Munroe who is a master at information retrieval specifically for people in all positions of power.  She is chameleon like in her appearance and can, with a little makeup or wig, appear to be young, old, male, female, attractive or derelict. 

Vanessa is hired by a Houston businessman (yes, oil) to find his daughter who has gone missing in Africa four years previous.  Little does anyone know is that she will be returning to her past in order to access the skills needed to find the woman.  She also has to reconcile with a particular man in her past that taught her the way of life she leads and that she ultimately had to escape from.

When I started reading, I was having a little trouble connecting this small dainty woman with the badass she was supposed to be.  The more I read though, especially once she connected back to Africa and the areas and people she left, I could feel not only the woman she was supposed to be, but also the woman that she wants to be but not able to quite become.  I can't compare it to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, since I am one of the few people on the planet who still has not read it, but I would compare her to the original La Femme Nikita, a woman who wants more than anything to be "normal", but can't quite figure out how to go about it.

This book publishes on March 8 from Crown and will be the first book in a trilogy.  I hope you like it, I did.  Check out her page on Facebook.

Gideon's Sword

Ahhh, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have been and incredible writing team for years.  I always wondered who was the more creative and who was the more technical of the two.  I suppose after more than 15 novels written together and several solo projects, I guess it really doesn't matter as they have more than proven that they know what it takes to take a book to the bestseller list.

Their newest novel, Gideon's Sword due out on February 22nd from Grand Central Publishing features new character Gideon Crew in search of the truth behind the gunning down of his father he witnessed when he was twelve.  Gideon, hired by Effective Engineering Solutions (EES), goes in search of a Chinese national who has the plans for a possible weapon. Currently, Gideon works for Sandia Laboratories, but EES is more interested in his college day skills as an art thief to help them retrieve the plans.   During the retrieval of these plans, Gideon also learns the truth about his father.

Preston and Childs continue to make complex characters that are willing to take the reader to the edge and then fall off the edge if needed.  While I still prefer the Pendergast novels, the side series detailing EES, allow the authors to bring in new plotlines and characters that might or might not make it into the Pendergast novels.  Sometimes we find out how a future Pendergast plot may take a turn by the introduction of these side characters, but more often than not, we just enjoy the side novels on their own.



http://www.prestonchild.com/