Bad Company

 

Bad Company by Sara Paretsky
11/10/26; 416 pages
St. Martin's Press 

Bad Company by Sara Paretsky is a highly recommended espionage novel following a retired CIA agent.  This is a standalone novel and not a part of the long running V.I. Warshawski series.

Lily Sedako, a 70 year-old former CIA agent who spent her career overseas, is living in Chicago when an anonymous person sent an article from the New Yorker magazine. In side was a picture of Lily with a group of women in Hayalistan, a former Soviet Republic where she was stationed for 20 years as a cultural attaché. The article also included students carrying protest signs. More concerning to Lily is that it suggests in the article that she betrayed the Hayali people, helped in the assassination plot of an indigenous Hayalistan leader, Rani, and brought in the company which is strip mining the land for minerals.

Since Lily was suddenly reassigned to another country before all that happened, she decides to look into why she is being targeted. She talks to former friend and CIA analytics chief Marissa Hockney, but gets no where. Lily suspects her former boss Bruce Weyrich is the one going after her. Using all her skills developed over a lifetime, she travels to Hayalistan under a different identity and begins to look into what is happening and contacting former friends. At the same time, the CIA and the FBI begin looking for her, marking the start of an intricate cat and mouse scenario.

This is well written and intricately plotted. Paretsky creates very detailed, information packed deep dive into the background and customs for Hayalistan, a fictional former Soviet republic, and the people there. She provides the same very detailed information about Lily, making her a fully realized character who feels fully formed even though this is her first outing. Readers will be rooting for Lily, a strong woman, while also being amazed at her physical abilities for a 70 year-old evading and escaping capture from much younger pursuers. She tackles aging, political corruption, greed, institutional power, individuals seeking influence, and searching for the ultimate truth.

There is an abundance of background information on everyone and everything throughout the entire novel. I'll admit that the plethora of intricate details and numerous names slow down the narrative, were periodically repetitive, and overwhelmed the plot at times. The ambition to create this fully former character and world is impressive. In some ways I felt like this could have been rewritten into multiple novels rather than providing all these characters and information at us at one time. On the other hand it is also nice to have the complete and very complicated story and character development all done in one fell swoop. 

Bad Company is an excellent choice for those who appreciate complex espionage novels. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.