I'd like to begin by thanking the publisher for the complimentary review copies of Taylor Stevens' series.
I had not read any of Stevens' novels before cracking open her latest novel,
The Catch. I love a good thriller and was eager to meet a character who must have staying power with readers for Stevens to have written several in a series. I hoped that jumping in on book four would allow me to have a good experience even though I didn't have the background knowledge that those who've read the previous books would have.
I was not disappointed!
Vanessa Michael Munroe is a fascinating character who likely appeals to both male and female readers. Her ability to change appearance between masculine and feminine, local and foreign, harmless or deadly paired with her gift of picking up languages in short order allow Munroe to operate anywhere in the world. She is a fascinating, strong, woman who knows how to put her skills and attributes to their best use. She is tough. She is a survivor. Her intuition is killer--and so is she.
The Catch is set in Africa, specifically off the coast of Somalia and in and around Mumbasa, Kenya. Munroe is hired on board a ship as part of a security team charged with helping a shipment reach its destination despite its route through Somali pirate infested seas. When the ship is attacked, Munroe is the first to discern that the apparent reason for the hijacking may not be the real motive after all. Having escaped the ship with it's injured captain, she figures out that it is the captain the hijackers were after rather than what lies in the cargo hold.
The book is an espionage type thriller that will keep readers on their toes trying to put the pieces together as quickly as Munroe seems to be doing. I found it nearly impossible to put down!
The exotic setting is made real due to Stevens' time spent in Africa. She paints a picture that readers will experience with all their senses. The lives of the native populations ring true. The poverty and violence along with the family loyalties and treatment of foreign business travelers and tourists. I found it interesting to get a feeling for the normalcy of the petty thefts that occur as well as a view as to how the medical system operates. (I must admit, reading
The Catch has made it far less likely that I will ever travel to Africa for fear of needing medical attention alone!)
I found that this book stood on its own quite well. I had enough information about Munroe to get caught up in her situation and to care what happened to her. I am excited that I now have the opportunity to go back and read the first three novels and I wonder if that will make me see what happened in
The Catch any differently.
From the publisher:
About Taylor Stevens…
When Stevens published her debut novel, The Informationist, it was celebrated by some of the best writers in the genre, including Lee Child, Vince Flynn, Michael Palmer, and Tess Gerritsen; it was widely covered in the national media; its rights were sold in twenty countries; it was optioned for film by James Cameron; and it became an instant New York Times bestseller. Reviewers and readers alike were drawn to Stevens’s complex characters—particularly her butt-kicking protagonist Vanessa Michael Munroe, who has drawn comparisons to Jason Bourne, Lisbeth Salander, Jack Reacher, and James Bond—and the page-turning plot that transported us from the United States and Germany to Equatorial Guinea and France. Her follow-up novels, The Innocent and The Doll, received critical acclaim and served to solidify her talents.
While readers quickly fell in love with Stevens’s fearless heroine, they were also fascinated by the author’s own compelling history: born into the Children of God, Stevens was raised in communes across the globe and denied an education beyond the sixth grade. She escaped the cult in her twenties, leaving everything behind to start over in the United States, and it was there that she taught herself to write. In her riveting new novel, THE CATCH (Crown; July 15, 2014), Stevens draws on her years spent living in Africa to craft the unforgettable scenes, settings, and cultures within the book.
Vanessa Michael Munroe, chameleon and information hunter, has a reputation for getting things done—often dangerous and not quite legal things. The difficult and deadly work has left her with blood on her hands and a soul stained with guilt. Having borne the burden of one death too many, Munroe has fled to Djibouti, Africa. There, where her only responsibility is greasing the wheels of commerce for a small maritime security company, she finds stillness—until her boss pressures her to join his team as an armed transit guard on a ship bound for Kenya. Days into the voyage, Munroe discovers that the security contract is merely cover for a gunrunning operation. The ship is invaded off the Somali coast, and in a moment of impulse while fighting her way out, she drags the unconscious captain with her. But nothing about the hijacking is what it seems. The pirates were never after the ship; they’d come for the captain. In chasing him, they make their one mistake: targeting Munroe raises the killer’s instinct she’s tried so hard to bury. Wounded and on the run, Vanessa Michael Munroe will use the life of her catch as bait and bartering chip to manipulate every player with a stake in the ship’s outcome, and find a way to wash her conscience clean.
An adrenaline-fueled ride of foreign intrigue that is filled with double-crosses and boots-on-the-ground scheming, THE CATCH is sure to be one of this summer’s biggest thrillers.
