The Informationist, by Taylor Stevens

Childhood is different for everyone: some are idyllic and others are filled with heartache.  If you’re lucky, you grow up in a house with loving parents, siblings, and extended family.  There will be good friends, plenty to eat, a roof over your head, a solid education, and entertaining family vacations.

But what if your childhood was spent moving between countries and continents? Your scholastic education ended at 12 years old? To put food on the table, you had to beg on the streets? Chores involved supporting hundreds of people? What if your family was labeled a cult? What if a child who grew up in a cult broke free and started writing stories? Author Taylor Stevens did grow up this way, and she used her childhood experiences to create Vanessa Michael Munroe, the informationist.

Michael (as she’s known to her clients) is in the business of information.  Hired by corporations, governments, and those individuals who can afford her services, Michael gathers intelligence for them by inhabiting foreign countries and infiltrating all echelons of society.  In The Informationist, Michael is hired to find out how and where a Texas billionaire’s daughter went missing in Africa.  She’ll have no choice but to use all of her expertise and knowledge of modern Africa–and to confront her own personal demons–in order to reach her goal.

Stevens has created a fascinating character who speaks 22+ languages, can blend in anywhere by manipulating her androgynous features, and has an intelligence and ability to read people that makes her a force to be reckoned with.  Michael’s fierce instinct for self-preservation, unpredictable fatalistic tendency, and frightening efficiency blended with vulnerability make her an irresistible protagonist.  You’ll love this book if you enjoy the action, pacing, and intelligence found in the Bourne Legacy movies or if you find the victim/survivor nature of Lisbeth Salander’s character from the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy utterly compelling.  Not to mention, you’ll never look at the landscape and culture of Africa quite the same way again.

Check the WRL catalog for The Informationist