Author: Taylor Stevens

Title: The Informationist

Publisher: Crown

Vanessa Michael Munro is not Lisbeth Salander. Certainly, devotees of Stieg Larsson's uber-popular trilogy which began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be drawn to The Informationist, the debut novel from Taylor Stevens which is being heavily promoted by publisher Crown in that vein.

The omnipresent popularity and universal acclaim which has met Larsson's work was bound to spawn a generation of imitative fiction, perhaps even a new genre: angry, sexy, cyber genius chick lit, or something like that. Fortunately, The Informationist, the debut novel from Taylor Stevens steers clear of that trap. It's never derivative and devilishly clever in the construction of Munro, a character with so many layers, she becomes an engrossing puzzle to be solved long after the story ends.

Sure, Munro rides a motor cycle, has a tomboy figure, and a take-no-prisoners attitude, but The Informationist is a completely different animal from Dragon Tattoo. While Larsson set out to construct a methodically-paced thriller, Stevens has crafted an equally riveting novel that's more a psychological study than a thriller. From the opening pages, Stevens does a remarkable job at tossing out bread crumbs of information about Munro, hints at her past which whet the appetite while the plot gets going.

A frighteningly accomplished specialist in information retrieval (translation - she can find anything on anyone in a matter of minutes), Munro gets a call from oil tycoon Richard Burbank to retrieve something different: his daughter Emily, missing for four years from central Africa. Munro accepts the job, and from the moment she sets foot in the meticulously-rendered jungles and bug-infested marshlands of countries like Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, old demons begin crawling up from the cesspool of her past.

Raised in Africa by missionaries, Munro cut loose at 14 and joined up with a band of crooks headed by Francisco Beyard. Here she received her training in all forms of lethal combat, and in the nature of human depravity courtesy of one of Beyard's colleagues. Munro crosses paths again with Beyard when her other leads dry up. The reunion sparks old chemistry between the two, a relationship which is more interesting not for its own sake, but for what latent trauma is allowed to bubble to the surface because of it.

Munro and Beyard spend the novel's middle third tramping all over central Africa in search of Emily Burbank. When they finally find her, the denouement of that mystery is not as satisfying as it should have been. We feel a bit miffed to have so blatantly revealed to us what we suspected all along: the plot of The Informationist is secondary to the character of Munro.

In this way, the pacing of The Informationist is not its strength. It never plods, but only occasionally races in the classic page-turner sense. It's not important what Munro's after, or up against for that matter. Where the central conflict becomes must-read territory is when the man-vs.-self action gets cranked up. The novel really finds its footing when exploring the flash-bombed wasteland of Munro's psyche. She's a feral animal of a protagonist, mesmerizing in her combination of instability and control. In the novel's climactic showdown, Munro dispatches an entire team of enemies while seemingly operating in a daze, on autopilot. That a human being could be capable of such callous brutality is chilling and fascinating.

Somehow, the fact that author Taylor Stevens emerged from the cult-like upbringing of the Children of God adds an air of verisimilitude to Munro's struggles, suggesting that however far we travel, we can never quite outrun our past. Fortunately, in the case of Stevens, whose promising career is just getting started with The Informationist, that fact remains untrue.

*This Review First Published 3/22/2011