Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong
Jul. 4th, 2007 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksTitle: Exit Strategy
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publication date: 2007 by Bantam
Why this book?I’ve enjoyed Armstrong’s paranormal books, which are emphatically not Romance but urban fantasy. When I saw that she had this book (possibly the start of a new suspense series) being released, I added it to a massive pre-order I made a while back.
Did I like the cover: Eh. It was fairly generic one that is short hand for a suspense novel: a woman in silhouette holding a gun with a silencer/supressor. Which makes sense, except there’s a scene in the book in which Nadia more or less says that they are useless, plus she generally prefers long range target shooting. More than the cover, I like the title, which is very accurate (unlike many) and not obscure. I’d say more about this, but any other information would constitute spoilers.
Regulars at Nadia’s nature lodge don’t ask what she does in the off-season. And that’s a good thing. If she told them, she’d have to kill them. She’s a hitwoman with a conscience: a former cop with her owns ways of thinning the criminal herd. But her days of solo missions are over when one of her contacts recruits her in the hunt for a ruthlessly efficient serial killer cutting a swath of terror across the country. The assassin is far too skilled to be an amateur – and the precision of the killings is bringing the Feds much too close to the hitman community for comfort.
To put an end to the murders, Nadia will have to turn herself from predator to prey as she employs every trick she knows to find the killer. Before the killer finds her…
The book opens with Nadia wrapping up a job – a bad guy who has gotten on the bad side of other bad guys. After completing her job, she heads back to her normal life, listening to the news and hearing about the most recent killing by the Helter Skelter Killer, so called because he kills randomly and leaves pages from Manson’s book behind. Arriving home, she’s contacted by Jack, her sort-of mentor. Does she really know Jack? No, not really, just what he wants her to know. And what he wants her to know now is that there is suspicion that the Helter Skelter Killer is a professional, which threatens their community…enough so that someone is funding a hunt for the HSK. Nadia declines the invitation initially, but then joins the hunt.
What connects the victims? Is HSK one of their own? What does s/he stand to gain? Is there a common thread anywhere? That’s what Nadia, Jack and several others try to figure out as innocent bystanders die.
Did I enjoy the book? Yes, I did. In fact, it was the third very good book I’ve read in short order, after having a very mediocre month of June when it came to reading. A grade from me.
Kelley Armstrong has a talent for crafting fascinating heroine-protagonists. In a lot of ways, Nadia reminds me of Armstrong’s first (and my favorite) heroine, Elena. Except Nadia is much more self-aware than Elena was in Bitten. One of the Elena’s realizations in that book was that being bitten and turning into a werewolf didn’t make her a woman with violent tendencies, if simply unleashed her, transporting her to a world where she didn’t need to rein herself in. Nadia, on the other hand, is very aware of the fault lines and cracks in her self, as well as their sources. Nadia strictly limits what work she does in order to avoid falling into vigilantism or cross too far into the dark. She kills but she still sees targets as people, and doesn’t want to move into the zone where targets are just jobs, no longer human beings. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I’m interested in reading Darkly Dreaming Dexter for a variety of reasons, not least of which is to compare him to Nadia, who seems sane, if possessed of her own vision of Justice and not always the most stable of narrators.
The cast of characters is quite fascinating. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the cast quirky but they are all certainly distinctive. Certainly their reasons for participating in the group hunt for HSK are diverse.
I find Jack to be rather interesting. He’s a mentor to Nadia, but in some ways he’s also a protector (from herself and from others) and a big brother character. Is there UST? I don’t think so; there’s a different potential lover (I don’t know that I’d say he has any hero potential or if Armstrong has any plans to take any future storyline that way), but he isn’t all that interesting to me. Jack seems wistful about possible retirement: it’s a goal, but not a realistic one for their crowd. He’s also wistful about connecting with other people. In some ways, Jack reminds me of Edward in the Anita Blake books, particularly in Obsidian Butterfly: the consummate professional, but also one who is looking for something he didn’t realize he’d missed. I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into the character? Still, I found the (non-romantic) relationship dynamic to be quite intriguing.
I haven’t said much about plot, because as is often the case with suspense novels, it’s hard to summarize without giving away serious spoilers. Suffice it to say that I didn’t see the end coming that way. And that I hope to read more about Nadia (and Jack).
New to me author?Nope, I stumbled across Armstrong's stuff back when Bitten was first published.
Keep or pass on? I’ve promised to lend my copy of Exit Strategy to a friend, so I’ll be passing it on…but I expect to get it back. And if I don’t, I’ll buy another copy because this was a very good book.
Anything else I want to share? The back of the book includes excerpts from all of Armstrong's books except Bitten and Stolen...which makes me wonder why they were excluded. Different publisher perhaps? Space/page constraints? Inquiring minds.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 01:24 pm (UTC)I have this one up next
Date: 2007-07-06 12:03 pm (UTC)Keishon
Re: I have this one up next
Date: 2007-07-06 01:42 pm (UTC)Thanks, that helps
Date: 2007-07-08 07:01 am (UTC)RfP (http://www.readforpleasure.com)
Re: Thanks, that helps
Date: 2007-07-08 02:04 pm (UTC)Bitten & Stolen are my favorite Armstrong books. I'd love to hear/read what you think of Exit Strategy, and hope I haven't led you astray.
Cheers,
~jmc