American Spy starts right up with an action sequence:
I unlocked the safe beneath my desk, grabbed my old service automatic, and crept toward my bedroom door, stealthy until I was brought to grief by a Lego Duplo that stung the sole of my foot.
The first chapter effectively establishes Marie's character as a concerned mother and trained law enforcement officer who, as a black woman, is not your typical spy. The rest of the book alternates between describing her childhood and her first big clandestine operation spying on the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso.
American Spy aspires to be more than a spy thriller. A key theme of the childhood chapters is that black Americans are something like spies in their everyday lives: fitting in, trying to escape notice, while having distinct objectives from the society they keep. Wilkinson attempts to deepen the action sequences with philosophical concerns, but she doesn't (yet) have the writing chops to pull it off. The style and plotting are comparable to popular mystery novels. The characters are not well-rounded enough to support the ambiguities Wilkinson hopes to convey. Marie, for instance, seems to toggle between disciplined and naive, and her motivations remain murky. Thomas Sankara, the president of Burkina Faso, is a stereotype of a charismatic leader; Marie's sister Helene is supposed to be mysterious but seemed transparent to me.
I really liked the ideas in American Spy; I wish it had been better executed.
No comments:
Post a Comment