Greg Rucka Private Wars

Private Wars

Greg Rucka

Bantam, Nov 2005, $24.00

ISBN: 0553802771

British spy Tara Chace left London on assignment in Saudi Arabia, believing she was probably the best special operations officer in the world, but returns home in shock, as her lover Tom Wallace died in the same fire fight that she was wounded in (see A GENTLEMAN'S GAME). She is sent to the Farm to recover, but her D-Ops superior at the Secret Intelligence Service, Crocker, expects her to act like Minder One and get back out there. However, besides battle fatigue, she is carrying Tom's child. Tara plans to become a full time mother to her child, whom she names Tamlin after giving birth.

However, she misses the danger, so when SIS informs her they need her to work a situation in Uzbekistan, she leaps back into the fold. The country's only President, since it broke away from the Soviets in 1991, Mihail Malikov is dying; his daughter Savara Malikov-Ganiev, and his son Ruslan vie, who is to become his successor. Civil war is imminent and British interests in the country require her to assassinate a third party manipulating the situation.

The latest Tara Chace espionage thriller, starts off somewhat different than the previous tales, as the lethal heroine suffers from shellshock, mostly caused by seeing Tom die, and hormonal imbalance caused by her pregnancy. However, she gives birth early in the story, and quickly knows that maternity leave is short for someone like her. Thus Greg Rucka humanizes his killing machine, but has her back in the middle of action-packed peril, in which the enemy keeps switching and remains murky at best. In spite of motherhood, Tara still lives the life of danger where everyone she meets is a potentially deadly stranger.