History and Culture of Tamil Nadu As Gleaned from the Sanskrit Inscriptions Book

RATING: 3.5

Kat Polinski and her sister, Suzy, dealt with grief differently. Upon the death of their father in a plane crash and the subsequent suicide of their mother, they go their separate ways. Kat is an undercover agent working for Homeland Security who hacks into foreign embassies and searches their computers for secret data. Suzy has moved to London and is living under an assumed name. Kat has just survived an incursion into the Kazakh embassy in Washington, DC, which has left five people dead. She returns home to a strange message from Suzy, who is murdered shortly thereafter.

Despite the pleading of her godparents to remain in the US, Kat feels she needs to go to London and find out what happened to her sister. What she uncovers there sheds a completely different light on her view of her sister, who had been doing her own share of undercover work trying to find out what happened to their father. Kat finds herself in a world where nothing is as it seems, and it is impossible to know who to trust. At times, those who she thinks she should fear turn around and help her; at other times, they set her up and leave her to her own devices.

There's a connection to something known as "Project Peace", an initiative which is just about to be enacted by several world governments and which will control the world's energy resources while sacrificing individual civil liberties. Suzy has found some chilling evidence that indicates that a powerful scion in Russia is backing the project for her own purposes and providing false data. She's saved photographic evidence (referred to as "the history book") and managed to let Kat know how to obtain it. Does Kat have enough time to release the materials and stop the signing of the agreement?

Kat is supposed to be a female action hero; however, in almost every case, she is assisted by someone else to get the job done. I found that odd, as she rarely accomplishes anything purely by relying on her own wits. It's a little too convenient that Kat's stateside contact is able to work magic long distance, that a former lover is able to carry off some assignments that contribute to her success, and a childhood friend has a key role in pulling off the denouement. The people she meets in the UK are similarly equipped to overcome all challenges.

In addition, she faces dangerous situation after dangerous situation; indeed, the Energizer Bunny has become the Unstoppable Kat. Therein lies one of the major faults of the book, the movement from one action sequence to the next without any interludes for reflection and planning. My other main complaint with the book is that there are too many characters, and I couldn't keep the good guys and bad guys straight in my own head.

The book is set in the near future, and the state of surveillance that exists at that time is actually more scary than almost anything else in the book. Citizens are routinely subjected to iris and palm scans; checkpoints are prevalent. It's truly the era of "Big Brother is watching you". How Kat and the people that are working with her to defeat the enemy get around these obstacles is interesting in its own right.

Humphrey Hawksley is a BBC foreign correspondent and commentator on world affairs. Although I mostly enjoyed The History Book, I think that if it had been a bit more grounded in reality and less "thriller-ish" that it would have been a better book.