Blowback by Valerie Plame is about a CIA ops officer, Vanessa Pierson, who is close to catching a criminal that she has been chasing for years. Vanessa has been tracking Bhoot, a dangerous international nuclear arms dealer. When one of her assets asked to meet and mentions that he has intel that she might find useful, Vanessa is excited. Her asset has confirmed that Bhoot will be visiting a secret underground weapons facility in Iran in a few days’ time. The information is useful because the CIA was never able to get any information about Bhoot’s whereabouts before. A few minutes before Vanessa was able to get the location to the facility, an ambush occurs that leaves her informant dead on her watch. Vanessa decides that there are now two people that she has on her target list: Bhoot and the sniper responsible for her asset’s death.
Vanessa decides to go rogue when she determines that she isn’t getting enough support from the Agency to protect her assets from Bhoot’s assassin. She ropes in a fellow ops officer who is also her secret lover. If her relationship with him, or that she asked him for help was discovered, it could jeopardize both of their careers.
The book was a fast paced read but it didn’t keep my interest. It didn’t have any unexpected twists but the ending was left as a cliffhanger. I felt like the writing was a bit bulky and stilted. It felt like the author was making an outline of things that happened. This occurred and then that happened and this was done next. It felt boring to read something that should be so action packed. At times, it had too many technical details about the spycraft business that went over my head. Then at times, it had too little detail to make the story feel real. The book felt very basic and had all the same elements of other spy novels without bringing anything new to the table.
I didn’t really connect with the main character as she was portrayed as flawless and perfect. She also seems to bear a lot of resemblance to the author who was an actual CIA agent but it would have been great if there was more character development with our fictional heroine. There was rarely any opportunity for the reader to bond and connect with Vanessa. I am curious to find out who the mastermind is in the novel but I am in no rush to pick up another book by the author.
