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The Informationist A Thriller Taylor Stevens Books

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The Informationist A Thriller Taylor Stevens Books

This book tends to leave the reader very conflicted! There are times when the writing flows smoothly and is well crafted - there are other times, too often, when the writing is clumsy and awkward. The primary character, Vanessa Michael Munroe, is anything but likeable, often verges on insanity, is violent and yet brilliant. She is not really someone the reader can identify with even though the characterization is pretty well done. The character development of the other players is less well done with tidbits of information dropped here and there. The African setting for much of the tale is interesting, but questionable in the overall harsh portrayal. I suppose the violence is germane to the characters but there is way too much detail. All told not a very likeable book. On my Kindle for some time and I am not sure why I bought it to start with! Finished it because I don't like to give up on a book and I kept hoping that it would resolve into something more interesting. Not particularly recommended.


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The Informationist A Thriller Taylor Stevens Books Reviews

First of all, I just don't see Michael, or Vanessa, as comparable to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. As a reader, she is not a character I feel engaged with. Too accomplished in all things, very unbelievable. And hard to see her at all as the femme fatale the men find her to be. I stuck with the book to see how it ended, but the ending too was quite hard to buy into. Also, this is a book for someone interested in the geography and the politics of African provinces. A lot of description.
The Informationist certainly held my attention, but I found Vanessa Michael Munroe to be more of a female James Bond for the 21st Century than a knockoff Lisbeth Salander.

VMM kicks butt in same way Bond did in Ian Fleming's novels, and the exotic locales the protagonist operates in also remind me of a modern day Bond novel. That's a good thing. The African, American and European locales were beautifully and interestingly drawn by author Taylor Stevens. Even though I was about a hundred pages ahead of our brilliant informationist in figuring out who the traitor and the bad guy were--the story still took me on a wild and compelling ride.

The plot is fairly straightforward. Texas oil billionaire hires a brilliant but demon-haunted investigator to track down his long-lost step-daughter. The search leads Vanessa Michael Munroe to Europe and eventually to Africa where dangers and complications abound.

I was mystified by the androgyny/cross-dressing thing and why it's supposed to be central to the lead character's personality. VMM uses her ability as a trick of the trade, but the reader is led to believe that this is integral to her character in ways that are never demonstrated or fully explained, except perhaps as possibly evidence of all of the demon battling she is doing. Also, enough with the demons. We're told and shown ad nauseum that Vanessa is haunted by metaphorical demons, and that's all fine and dandy--everyone loves a deeply-flawed private eye. But I lost track of the number of instances of the word "demons" in the book and how often the lead character had to take a break from the action to battle them. It got in the way of the story in the same way as if we had to stop every 50 pages or so to battle a migraine headache.

Those flaws aside, I enjoyed this book and look forward to following VMM on her further adventures.
A wild and dangerous female protagonist with a deep, twisted, personal history and a gift for both languages and reading people's true agendas, is hired to track down a billionaire's daughter. The action takes place in Gabon, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, along the Western coast of Africa. Lavish local color teases at all of the reader's senses, nailing down the illusion of being present in this environment. The characterizations are vivid and the plot never stops twisting. A handful of scenes told from the view of someone other than the protagonist are mildly jarring, not because there's something wrong with multiple viewpoints, but because otherwise it sticks so consistently to Vanessa's. On the other hand, I'm not sure the tale could have been told as smoothly without breaking POV. A lot of things didn't get done here today because I had to find out how it all came out.
I had some difficulty getting into this book but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Vanessa Michael Munroe is smart, competent, independent, determined and a little like Lisbeth Salander with special forces training. So what does an “informationist” do? She obtains information not by computer hacking but the old fashioned way - she goes to the sources, countries, people, and she digs around for it. Then she puts the info together so that it’s helpful to those who hire her. The first book is a little different in that she’s hired to look for a missing girl. The story was complicated with interesting supporting characters and lots of plot twists. I recommend for fans of Stieg Larsson, Vince Flynn, David Baldacci and other top-notch thriller writers. I’m really surprised this series of books isn’t more well known.
This book tends to leave the reader very conflicted! There are times when the writing flows smoothly and is well crafted - there are other times, too often, when the writing is clumsy and awkward. The primary character, Vanessa Michael Munroe, is anything but likeable, often verges on insanity, is violent and yet brilliant. She is not really someone the reader can identify with even though the characterization is pretty well done. The character development of the other players is less well done with tidbits of information dropped here and there. The African setting for much of the tale is interesting, but questionable in the overall harsh portrayal. I suppose the violence is germane to the characters but there is way too much detail. All told not a very likeable book. On my for some time and I am not sure why I bought it to start with! Finished it because I don't like to give up on a book and I kept hoping that it would resolve into something more interesting. Not particularly recommended.