by Amanda Kyle Williams
Naiad Press (1993)
Reviewed by Robert Thompson June 22, 1993
This book is the newest in the Madison Mcguire spy series. Madison Mcguire is a female super spy with the CIA, sent to Peru to make contact with a small group of "peasants" who have decided to vigorously oppose the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorists that are making life in Peru even more tenuous than usual.
At the same time, a small unit of American soldiers is in the jungles of Peru to take direct although covert action against the cocaine cartel by destroying their processing facilities. This unit is led by Paulina Holgodo, a female super soldier. (There is a male captain along for part of the trip who is nominally in charge, but he gets killed early on, and besides, it was clear that Paulina was the one in charge all along.)
Madison completes her mission, and about the time that she is supposed to be going home, she finds out about Paulina's covert military operation, and also discovers that the mission has been compromised, and cast adrift by the U.S. government. (It is an election year, the military operation was illegal, and the President got cold feet.) So Madison decides to rescue the surviving American soldiers on her own. She succeeds and everyone lives happily ever after.
Naiad Press is a lesbian - feminist publishing house, Amanda Kyle Williams and Madison McGuire are also openly lesbian feminists. I was pleased that this book wasn't a treatise on militant feminism and lesbianism. It was just a entertaining adventure story with two women in a situation that women are not likely to face in the foreseeable future. Don't misunderstand me, there are some women who are capable of doing what Madison and Paulina had to do, it is just that cultural and political realities make this story a fantasy trip for feminists.
It was an entertaining story and if you overlook the gender issues and a few technical errors, it could happen (or may have already happened) in real life. The only substantive problem that I have with this book is that with the exception of the Shining Path stuff, Tom Clancy told the same story "way back in '89".with A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER. This story is dangerously similar to Clancy's: Substitute Paulina for Domingo Chavez with Madison playing a composite of John Clark and Jack Ryan, moving the story from Peru to Colombia the stories are nearly identical. Even some of the dialog is a close copy. I think that if the legal department at Naiad had read Clancy's book, THE SPY IN QUESTION would not have been published.
I am intrigued however; I think I'll check out some of Williams other work.
As a side note, if you want to read some entertaining stories about a female super spy, try the Modesty Blaise books by Peter O'Donnell. Madison McGuire is OK, but she is no Modesty Blaise.