TAKING THE QUEEN

A reporter works to uncover the misdeeds of a federal agency and a threat to global commerce in this spy novel.

The evil Singapore Group oversees organized crime activity throughout the world, and at the opening of Camelback’s debut novel, they’re planning to hijack the passenger ship Queen en route from Southampton to Sydney. The author provides backstory for some of the group’s members, including Somalian warlord Ali Mohmaad and Russian general managerVassily Kusnecko, who both figure prominently in the hijacking plot. The FBI’s Las Vegas bureau chief, David Massey, works to infiltrate the group through DEF CON, a software/hacker convention held in the city, and Brandon Lancy and Matt Dolan go undercover in the group’s Russian membership. Dolan soon realizes that the FBI is illegally entrapping the Singapore Group with the Queen heist, so he blows the whistle on the agency. Former Washington Post journalist Prometheus Foster—now an IT analyst—works feverishly alongside current reporter Smarty Jason to ensure that Dolan remains a free man, untangling the threads of the Singapore Group’s activities and using the Freedom of Information Act to suss out the FBI’s involvement and the details of the Queen’s hijacking. The novel follows Foster’s diligent work as he tries to keep Dolan out of prison and free from surveillance—and it all ends with a wedding, of all things. Camelback presents an ambitious and intriguing plot over the course of this novel. However, it’s often obscured by unrealistic dialogue (“I might as well be honest, pursuing redemption without an epiphany is a constant challenge”) and stilted prose. It also often relies on clichés and stereotypes rather than nuanced research into the cultures it portrays. Early in the narrative, for instance, Kusnecko “offer[s] Lancy an enticement, ‘I want to take you and your friend on a Russian adventure to the former city of Leningrad in my custom made sports car.…I sense that you like to drive fast cars with perfect precision.’ ” The novel is full of similarly clunky moments, which sacrifice depth for easy signposting.

A complex but somewhat clumsy caper novel.