LA Times on OUTSOURCED: "The Political Thriller We Deserve." A Sneak Peek.

OUTSOURCED publishes officially tomorrow and the first reviews are already in!  I'll be starting a series tomorrow about OUTSOURCED, including some uncomfortable real world questions it raises.  But I wanted to share the first reactions.  Following is the Los Angeles Times, review by Sarah Weinman who turned what could have been an ordinary review into an excellent essay on the post 9/11 thriller.  It's a little long, but worth reading the entire piece of this brilliant essay.  Here is an excerpt:

Of course, none of these writers is obligated to chronicle the murky waters created by the "war on terror," but their passive consensus has troubled R.J. Hillhouse, a former professor of international relations and author of the post-Cold War spy novel "Rift Zone," who last month flipped her position on the McGrath-Lynds dialectic. (The latter's essay was originally published on Hillhouse's website.) "Thriller writers have become apologists for the excesses of our age," Hillhouse wrote, including herself in the charge. Instead of finishing the thriller she'd been slated to work on, she changed direction and followed her muse down more labyrinthine — and creatively risky — paths.

The vision Hillhouse presents of America's ongoing terrorist battle in "Outsourced" (Forge: 400 pp., $25.95) is painted with the expected hazy shade of gray. Former lovers turn to enemies and back again with alarming speed; longtime confidants sell each other out at the promise of extra cash or under threat of blackmail. Gruesome death is accompanied by varying levels of guilt and remorse. Where "Outsourced" differs from previous generations of spy thrillers is in the nature of the players: Instead of the CIA battling the KGB or a lone wolf taking on the establishment, private companies are now running the show, focusing more on prized government contracts than the hunt for terrorists. "When Julius Caesar marched his army across the Rubicon River, he knew he was starting civil war in Rome," remarks one operative to his boss. "I'd say we're looking at the same thing — civil war."

At the center, sometimes together but often apart, are two veterans of the private army world: Camille Black (née Stella Hawkins), chief executive of Black Management, and Hunter Stone, a multiple-aliased operative working with a secretive intelligence section of the Department of Defense. (He also happens to be Black's former fiancé.) Their relationship is an obvious metaphor for the high-stakes double-dealing of their professional lives, but Hillhouse plays with expectations just enough to avoid cliché. Yes, Black is hired by the CIA to kill Stone, but the two don't join forces to hunt a common enemy after bouts of steamy sex. Instead, the single love scene here propels the plot in an unexpected direction, and the enemies they fight are diffuse and elastic.

Hillhouse creates vivid images of stark violence and high emotions that amplify her strongest gift: the ability to depict an utter lack of morality both in and out of Baghdad's Green Zone. We understand why mercy and humanity are unwelcome feelings for Stone, just as we feel his sense of outrage that "none of his training had prepared him for torture at the hands of another American." For a novel with a weighty subject, "Outsourced" also benefits from Hillhouse's dark humor about turf wars and other political maneuvers. "[I]n the War on Terror, the Pentagon's the eight-hundred-pound gorilla and at best you guys at Langley are Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp," remarks one of Black's employees to a high-ranking CIA executive, summing up the power struggle between two government agencies in a single sentence.

"Outsourced" is not a perfect political thriller — fascinating as they are, there are perhaps too many expository paragraphs that slow the plot down. But perhaps it is the political thriller we deserve. By traveling the more complicated route, Hillhouse manages a neat trick: to balance nonfiction-style education with a gripping story that opens with great betrayal and only worsens after that. Here, perhaps, we have definitive proof that McGrath was wrong: Espionage writers are ready to write fiction that tells the darkest possible truths.

The full review essay can be found here.

****

And the first web review is also in from a wonderful site that specializes in Central Asia, Registan.net. In case you're wondering where the segue is, OUTSOURCED is set in Iraq and Uzbekistan with short sojourns to Afghanistan, McLean, Virginia and the Missouri Ozarks).  The full review is here.  Following is an excerpt:

This is where Outsourced comes into play. Like another current events fiction book I loved...RJ Hillhouse uses a fictional story to highlight the severe danger Private Military Corporations, or PMCs, represent. This allows her to explore how and why this system can break down (and often does, told through real life news stories excerpted at the beginning of most chapters) without coming off as a preachy, and quite possibly shallow, polemic. 

In that sense, she is writing in the vein of early Tom Clancy, demonstrating extensive research, deep literacy of the political, social, and military issues involved, and a good eye for thrill. The writing is crisp, the pacing good, and the descriptions both enjoyable and clearly born of knowledge and not assumption. A love story between a warrior woman named Stella but known as her alias Camille, and Hunter Stone, a Pentagon Spy caught in a collapsing circle of competing agendas, forms the general framework of the story. Through this story, some of the more pernicious aspects of the chaos in Iraq come to light, including just how very easy it is to make people disappear there without explanation or investigation.   

Just that section alone, showing how easy it is for personal agendas to not just set back the mission of peace but to rapidly spiral into a murderous cycle of revenge, would make this keen reading. But it is when the book morphs into a larger critique of how the War on Terror is conducted ...that its real value becomes clear....

Ms. Hillhouse has accomplished something very few have: she has forced me to reexamine my own relationship with the government, including who I support and why. Who in charge is really looking out for our interests? And even if they are, is it moral for me to bask in our safety and prosperity when it comes at such a tremendous cost? Whatever answers I eventually settle out in my own head, the process of answering them will have proven extremely valuable. If for no other reason, even if it weren’t an exciting spy thriller, I’d recommend it. As it is, there are many reasons to buy this and read.

The full review is available here and OUTSOURCED is available here or in your local bookstore.

Comments

[BillW.]

RJ,

First off congratulations on your 100'th post here on the blog. It has been a fun ride.

Second, can't wait to finally read that book !

[Joshua Foust]

I appreciate the mention, and, as I said, I loved the book!

[J.]

Congrats on the glowing review - I have your book, will be diving into it very soon.

[TLN]

RJ,
My husband is working in Iraq for one of the security companies you mentioned here. I am definately going to pick up a copy of your book!
TLN