Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆
Lance Charnes and I are Goodreads friends, and I’ve read and liked two of his earlier novels; so he offered me a free review copy of this newly-published book. (There wasn’t any guarantee that I’d also like this one, but he does know my tastes pretty well.) The opener for a projected new series, this tale spins off from the author’s DeWitt Agency Files, and Carson (no first name!), the protagonist here, is an important character in the opener for the first series, The Collection. (This review avoids spoilers for Zrada, but might have some for the former novel.)
The DeWitt “Agency” operates on the edge (and sometimes over the edge) of legality in the world of super-expensive art objects trade, a milieu with a decidedly dark underbelly, which the author has thoroughly researched. But, besides the change from a male to a female protagonist, where I classified the original series as crime fiction, I’d classify this one more as straight action-adventure. The emphasis here isn’t on art, the mechanics of art swindles, etc.; the art in the story is more of a McGuffin, with the emphasis on action, danger, derring-do, weapons and explosions. (This book is set in 2016, the same year the original book was published, and the author establishes that the events in the latter have already happened.)
Ex-cop Carson (she’s divorced, but still uses her married name) is a complex, thoroughly round and very distinctive character, and a highly private person with her share of secrets. (We get to know her here in much more depth than we do in The Collection, though she was also well-realized there.) Abrasive, prickly, potty-mouthed and tough as nails, she works as a mercenary for Allyson DeWitt, and also hires out, albeit reluctantly, as an occasional hit woman for a Russian mob boss, in order to protect family who are under his gun –though she does draw a firm line in the sand against harming innocents. As that suggests, there’s more moral depth to her than you might at first think; she’s actually a person of very real integrity and honor. She’s got a conscience that she listens to; her word’s her bond, and she cares about people, though she doesn’t trust or make friends easily.
This time out, Carson’s mission is legally and ethically unobjectionable. Back in 2009, two valuable 15th-century paintings were stolen in a burglary at a German museum. Now, they’ve fallen into the hands of a Chechen fence, who’s wiling to return them to the legal owner –for 2 million Euros. If he made that exchange in any peaceful, law-abiding country with an honest and functional police force, he’d be arrested in minutes. So, he’s set up the meeting in the lawless, war-ravaged Donbass, Ukraine’s break-away Eastern region, and cut a cash-strapped (but well-armed) rebel militia into the deal as his partners. The DeWitt Agency is handling the swap. Our heroine’s job is to deliver the cash safely, act as bodyguard for the museum staffer who can authenticate the paintings, and bring both of the latter back intact, come hell or high water.
Besides being obviously combat-capable, she landed the assignment because she speaks both Ukrainian and Russian; though raised in Canada, she’s of Ukrainian stock (her maiden name was Tarasenko). As the book opens, she, the museum expert, and the Agency’s local “associate” and his two minions are pulling into the meeting place. Her nerves are on edge; a LOT of wealth is going to be on the table here, and she’s surrounded by hungry, desperate strangers (or people she knows to be morally dubious) for many miles around. (And readers who know Ukrainian won’t be reassured by the book title; it’s the word for “betrayal”….)
Here as in The Collection, Lance writes in the present tense; this takes a moment or two of getting used to if your mind is expecting past tense. But I’ve encountered this technique before in a number of books, so adjusted quickly; and it does create a sense of “you-are-there” immediacy. The plotting has its twists and turns, but it’s mostly quite believable; it’s also focused on one strand, though from different perspectives, and tautly compressed in time, occupying just nine days. Narration is in third-person, but in the vocabulary of whatever character is the current viewpoint one (usually Carson, if she’s present).
For me, it wasn’t a quick read; the author’s prose style is straightforward, but there are a lot of Slavic personal and place names (a character list and real-world map of the geographical setting is provided) and references to unfamiliar-to-me types of guns and military hardware to wade through, and I found myself reading more carefully to pick up details of description and action. However, it’s a very gripping, involving read which quickly engaged me emotionally. The narrative pace itself is quite fast, and while the action isn’t “non-stop” (any book in which it actually is would by definition be pretty shallow otherwise, which this one definitely isn’t!), there’s a lot of it, steadily punctuating the narrative. Vivid, realistic and well-realized action scenes are one of this author’s fortes.
An even more important one is development of nuanced characters who come to life as understandable people, on both sides of the country’s civil war. For instance, the militia characters are not cartoon villains, or necessarily “villains” at all, as such. Some characters definitely ARE villains (though not cartoonish ones), but even they may have an admixture of better qualities along with their sleaze. Fans of action heroines here will have the added plus of meeting another fighting female, ex-Ukrainian National Guard soldier Galina, who’s far from a Carson clone (she’s a developed, distinct character in her own right), but who can more than pull her weight in a combat situation.
There’s no sex here, just some passing references to past sexual activity (Carson’s trust issues and low opinion of marriage and males, which her one try at the former didn’t help, give her the ratchet towards commitment-free flings that you’d expect). A number of characters have foul mouths, often shaped by military culture (both Ukrainian and Russian have an exact parallel to the American f-word, which the author translates :-( ), but that’s realistic for the character types, and, refreshingly, not everybody does.
Despite the cruelty and greed often in evidence here, this is at its core a profoundly moral novel, whose messages (delivered by example rather than sermonizing) encourage readers to be kinder, less selfish, more honest and caring in their treatment of other people. My main quibble was with decisions by a couple of characters that, IMO, served the plot rather than being in character and/or very smart (and Carson’s not stupid!) But that doesn’t keep me from highly recommending this to action fans.
Author: Lance Charnes
Publisher: Wombat Group Media; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.