TBR: The Informationist

This book sounds really good!

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens will be released on March 8, 2011.

Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information—expensive information—working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she's never looked back.

Until now.

A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It’s not her usual line of work, but she can’t resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she’s tried for so long to forget.

Gripping, ingenious, and impeccably paced, The Informationist marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

This particular review from Publisher's Weekly has got my attention:

“Stevens’s blazingly brilliant debut introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander….Thriller fans will eagerly await the sequel to this high-octane page-turner.”

I'm a big fan of Lisbeth Salander's character.  We need more kickass women like her in our thrillers.  I'm hoping Vanessa “Michael” Munroe will live up to the hype.

I grabbed this from The Infomationist's Facebook page:

Corporations need her. Governments pay her. Criminals fear her. But nobody sees her coming.

That particular blurb is what originally pulled me in to wanting to check out this book.

Even more intriguing than this book's plot, though, is the author's unbelievable past.  An excerpt from her Facebook page:

Cut off from personal family, at times under the care of sadistic individuals and without access to books or television from the outside world, imagination became a survival mechanism. As a young teenager, I secretly entertained commune children with fantastic stories that took us through time and space, until these sins were discovered by cult leaders. Several laboriously hand-written books were confiscated and burned and I was ordered on pain of – well, a whole lot of pain – never to write again.

You can read the rest of the author's biography here.

This post is being shared as part of Breaking the Spine's "Waiting for" Wednesday.

Stay tuned!