The Innocent - "Innocent" Sure as Hell Doesn't Apply to Vanessa Munroe
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Author: Taylor Stevens
Title: The Innocent Genre: thriller Once again, Vanessa “Michael” Munroe is on the trail of a kidnapped teen. She’s even brought along the same support staff – Bradford and Logan - though this time the superwoman is patrolling the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina, instead of the sweaty jungles of equatorial Africa. The setting may be different, but the action, sadly enough, is sure to be the same. Logan himself, Munroe’s support staff and oldest friend, is her contractee for this caper. With a group of friends, he’s put together $50K for Munroe to seek out thirteen-year-old Hannah, daughter of a woman who had escaped from a religious cult called “The Chosen.” Hannah was kidnapped years ago and spirited back into the cult, which maintains a worldwide presence and seems impervious to authorities wherever they happen to be based. For what it’s worth, that $50K is about 1% of Munroe’s typical fee… In case you couldn't predict it (as we learn on page 37), Hannah has been turned out as a child prostitute to the cult's wealthy sponsors, but Logan doesn’t know that. Perhaps that’s how The Chosen manage to have so much money and influence… Munroe and Bradford, predictably, go off-book in their operation, a three-step plan: investigate, infiltrate, extract – with as little bloodshed as possible. Naturally, the operation goes pear-shaped just as they’re about to make the snatch, necessitating plenty of quick-thinking and greatly increasing the opportunities for Munroe’s bloodlust to be sated – always on bad guys, of course… The second novel from Texas author Taylor Stevens, who claims to have grown up in cult similar to “The Chosen, The Innocent is slightly worse than her first, The Informationist. The basis of the series is a by-the-numbers kludge that combines the animal magnetism of James Bond with killing machines a la Terminator. Munroe is a genius polyglot – she speaks two dozen languages fluently; can clear out a roomful of thugs single-handedly, unarmed, leaving all of them dead; and is also hotter than a firecracker – either as a girly female or as an androgynous male. In other words, she can fuck information out of anyone she wants. Yeah, sure: she'd clearly prefer to use her knives. The Innocent plays on all the tropes one comes to expect when cults are involved, in particular sexual abuse of teen girls… teen boys, too, for that matter. Munroe’s character is no more fleshed out than it was in The Informationist, and it is even more clear the Stevens does at best minimal research into either technology or martial arts; in particular the latter, as Munroe’s escapades are invariably cloaked in the invocation of “instinct” and “a killing haze” instead of even minimal detail. Were it not for constant references to sex, the series’ overdependence on suspension of disbelief would mark it as juvenile fare. As it is, The Innocent marks a continuation of the weaknesses so pronounced in The Informationist. I have little doubt that the weaknesses are similarly pronounced in installment 3 of the series, The Doll. I’ll probably not let you know. all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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