The Spy in Question by Amanda Kyle Williams

The Spy in Question by Amanda Kyle Williams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


And we, as in me, have once again reached the end of a series. It has been 13+ years since the last book appeared, and a completely different series has popped up and reached three books since then, so a fifth book is unlikely and/or unexpected to appear.

This specific book finds Madison McGuire focused on and in Peru.

The President is up for reelection and he figures it might help his chances if he ‘did something’ about drugs. He looks at some plans then sets two separate ones in motion. Then turns things over to his Chief of Staff with the idea that he’d have plausible deniability (you know, like with Oliver North and that Iran-Contra thingie).

One mission involves a group of military personal inserted into the jungles of Peru. Their mission: destroy coco processing locations, record plane tail numbers, and in general cause havoc to Shining Path guerilla force which claims the coco fields as their own (and those fields, apparently, are where 70% of the coco comes from (I got confused somewhere along the way as to whether or not this was 70% of Columbia’s drug cartels coco production or 70% of the world’s coco production)). Note about the book description: It is misleading, specifically the part that reads “The resistance fighters are disciplined and courageous, their main cog Paulina Holgodo, a jungle-savvy Latina” (first off – that implies that Holgodo is a member of the resistance (and the prior paragraph lets the reader know that ‘the resistance’ is not referring to the US military force inserted into the jungle – what with the line ‘American help to a small resistance band hidden in the Peruvian jungle’), Holgodo is a Sergeant with the US military, not a resistance fighter; her band of military personal are not, in fact, in the jungle helping a small resistance band – they themselves are the small group running around the jungle shooting things. Though there is a resistance group, it isn’t connected to the military personal, and as far as I know, they are not even specifically connected to the jungle).

Mission two involves Madison McGuire sent into Peru to make contact with a specific fella who was a farmer, but is now the head of a brand new resistance group – the National Liberation Front (I believe that was the name used). The Shining Path had wandered in and destroyed a community –killing a few of the members there, killing cows, taking some animals, and then leaving. One of the people killed was that fella’s sister. Naturally he’s pissed. The government is corrupt and powerless in the face of the Shining Path, and the Shining Path, despite having some vague seed of ‘fighting for the people’, is corrupt and hooked up with the drug cartels. And so, that fella (I really should have used his name at some point, I believe it’s something like Enrique Navarro), raises the local people to fight back – or at least defend themselves and their communities against the Shining Path.

And, as is something of a common theme with this series, the government, as in the US government, is kind of dickish and corrupt – out for its own interests. I’ve mentioned it before – that specific thread reminds me a lot of how John Le Carre books go – what with the sad depressed operatives working for depressing incompetent and/or corrupt government forces.

This is a damn good series, and readable by any and everyone. It is unfortunate that some would notice that Madison McGuire was a lesbian and flee in the opposite direction, crying out in horror. But, their horrific homophobia is both their loss and mine (since the one group kept themselves from reading four good books; and another (as in me) find themselves having only four books to read (since the author saw the writing on the wall (I’ve been told), and realized that lesbian fiction books just don’t sell enough copies)).

For those looking for romance – look elsewhere; for those looking for graphic depictions of a sexual nature – there is some sex, though not very explicit and not much of it. For those looking for a fun exciting action packed thrilling adventure . . . they might find it here depending on what ‘they’ mean by those words. This is a good spy thriller.

November 25 2016




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