I was left with a mixed feelings about Noel Hynd's thriller, Conspiracy in Kiev. On the one hand, it includes everything you want in a good thriller - lots of exciting locations, well-planned murders, dramatic explosions, morally ambiguous underworld figures. On the other hand, it took a lot longer to wade through than your average spy novel, partly due to the continuing annoyance of the heroine's cloying perfection and the very occasional annoyance of some really bad writing.
Conspiracy in Kiev tells the story of Alex LaDuca, a Treasury employee charged with investigating financial scams like the ubiquitous "send your money to Nigeria to help out the king who will reward you handsomely" emails. The plot really gets going when Alex is tapped to go to the Ukraine in advance of a controversial and dangerous Presidential visit. Her ostensible purpose is to broker a deal with (and keep an eye on) a major local gangster who owes the U.S. money. She earns this assignment because of her almost too-good-to-be-true resume - fluent in five languages, athletic, beautiful, brilliant, composed, and morally flawless. After brief training in the Ukrainian language she is off.
Without giving away the exciting moments, Alex ends up embroiled in an international event much larger than tax evasion. After her trip to the Ukraine, Hynd's ambition really shows itself - he continues the story several months past what could have been the climax of the novel and manages to rebuild excitement around a second line of plot development, this time centered in South America, but all spiraling back to the events in the Ukraine.
Hynd clearly is a master of plotting and this skill is what made the book most enjoyable. What detracted from the pleasure was Alex's otherworldly goodness - I kept waiting for some small chink in her armor and was disappointed to find none. She has bad moods and personal traumas to settle, but her essential character, besides having all the skills and talents listed above, is one of perfection - she is kind, wise, sensible, assertive, dedicated, pious, nearly fearless, and makes the right moral choice in every instance. At times this got almost ridiculous. This appeared to be Hynd's main concession to the genre of "Christian mystery" he was writing in, aside from character development related to Alex's church attendance. Perhaps he did not want his protagonist to show any un-Christian flaws. The only other qualm I had in reading this novel was the occasional turn of phrase that was jarringly awful. For instance, "The design was endlessly intricate and delicate, as if made by hands guided by angels." Or consider this description, smack in the middle of a good action sequence: "The sweat rolled off her so furiously that she felt as if a fat person were lying on top of her."
Despite this, Hynd's novel is enjoyable, if light, reading. I also learned something about the intricacies of the European criminal underworld. He tied up all his loose ends, leaving the completist in me satisfied by the scope of this ambitious and interesting novel.
---Katy Wischow
imagineatrium.com
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