Holly
Lin is living two lives. To her friends and family, she's a pleasant,
hardworking nanny. To her boss and colleagues, she's one of the best
non-sanctioned government assassins in the world.
But
when a recent mission goes wrong causing one of her team members to die, she
realizes she might no longer be cut out for the work — except the mission, as
it turns out, is only half over, and to complete it will take her halfway
across the world and bring her face to face with a ghost from her past.
Things
are about to get personal. And as Holly Lin's enemies are about to find out,
she is not a nanny they want to piss off.
No Shelter (Spy/Assassin)
By Robert Swartwood
RMS Press
Price $15.00 (Paperback)
Price $ (Kindle)
338 Pages
Rating 4-Stars
In this first novel featuring
Asian-American Holly Lin, we learn her background and that she works as an
assassin for the government, her boss is Lieutenant-General (3 stars) Walter
Hadden; she also is employed as his family’s nanny, which gives her total
access to the general. She is the daughter of a Japanese mother and Chinese
father. She had joined the Army after high school, and while overseas her
friend was raped and beaten by a soldier. She took it on herself to get even
when her friend committed suicide, and she was arrested for murder. General
Walters got her out of jail and brought her to work for his assassin unit. This
is a complicated plot in which her task originally was to retrieve a flash
drive from an arms dealer and take him out. There was a party with prostitutes
that night and she is brought in as one of them. After killing the arms dealer
and his guards, she gets the flash drive and rescues one of the girls. The
Mexican girl tells her there is a ranch holding thirty or more illegal Mexican girls
slaves for prostitution, and she takes it on herself to rescue them. Naturally,
this upsets a cartel and they want her dead. And so does terrorists who were
after the flash drive that is now in the hands of the American government.
People who are supposed to be dead show up very much alive, which complicates
the plot – and her life – even more.
This is a good story with
plenty of action, and Holly Lin takes a lot of beatings before it comes to an
end. My one big complaint with the story concerns the character of Holly Lin.
The author does everything right with her, but he fails making her a female
Asian assassin, instead she comes across more as one of the boys. As good as
this story is, I’m hoping the sequels bring out both her femininity and Asian
background. There are male authors who write feminine leads quite well. For
instance, Ian Hamilton’s Ava Lee; Thatcher Robinson’s Bai Jiang; The Black
Stiletto by Raymond Benson; and K.W. Jeter’s Kim Oh. However, Holly Lin is highly
recommended for its great plotting and action.
Tom Johnson
Author of THE MAN IN THE
BLACK FEDORA
