Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Within hours of arriving in New York City, Jane is dragged into a case and finds herself up against one of the toughest minds she’s ever had to crack: a Silicon Valley billionaire whose ex-business partner has just been murdered.
Sarah Noble is the darling of the tech world – the genius behind an AI defence system that hijacks enemy missiles. But when Sarah’s estranged business partner is killed in a mysterious plane crash, suspicion immediately falls on one of the few people who could hack the plane’s guidance system and had a motive to do so: Sarah herself.
Against her better judgement, Jane agrees to profile Sarah and is immediately drawn into a world beyond her control, where money is no object, murder a tool of trade and the stakes go straight to the heart of the United States itself. Jane Halifax will need all her forensic experience to unlock the secrets of one of the world’s most formidable minds..
UNBLESSED is the latest in the Jane Halifax series of books, featuring the TV series character of the same name. A forensic psychologist, Halifax has worked with all sorts of criminal types - from serial to opportunistic killers, and in the last book, herself, when she suffers from sudden onset amnesia as a result of a car accident. You don't need to have read the earlier books in the series necessarily, although Halifax has got a bit of baggage that she's carting around with her which is not always fully revisited in each outing.
In UNBLESSED she's in the US visiting her stepdaughter Zoe, when she finds herself dragged (kicking a lot) into the case of a tech mogul who is initially suspected of killing off her business partner and his girlfriend (who is also the CFO of the company). Now Sarah Noble is, in many ways, a typical tech mogul. She's on the autism spectrum, renowned for her constant wearing of headphones to block out the world and her astounding mathematical aptitude. She's got a company that is working with the American Defence force in the area of missile defence systems. Working with weapons systems, there are complications like the official secrets act, federal government and agency oversight, and some complicated contractual obligations and implications. Although it was an argument much closer to home that threatened the end of the company. Her now dead business partner attempted a takeover / to remove Noble, a problem that conveniently went away when he died in a mysterious plane crash. Needless to say, Noble has a perfect motive and the ability to hack the plane's guidance system.
Halifax finds herself court appointed to care for the sometimes mercurial, always tricky, moody, and flat out a bit odd Noble in a series of very luxurious locations, with an increasingly unnerving range of threats getting closer and closer.
To say there's a lot going on in this plot might be setting too low an expectation. Along with the plane crash, there's a tanking share price and a market that had already been twitchy about the battle for control. The work is extremely secretive and sensitive - the interception and redirection of missiles - which according to a badly timed whistleblower's accusations, may not be as solid as investors have been led to believe. Then there's Noble herself, and the struggle that Halifax has in trying to get her to cooperate with the conditions of the court imposed care and therapy orders. Noble's her own worst enemy frequently, maintaining a manic work schedule, alongside some serious depressive episodes, alienating everyone who seems to be trying to help her, and refusing to acknowledge the reality of a situation that keeps changing anyway. Add to that drugs, Hollywood connections, people wandering about shooting guns, and an armed drone attack, and, well it's no exaggeration to say there's a lot going on.
Reading UNBLESSED was a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand there is so much to this, you'd think it would be moving at a serious pace, juggling enough balls to keep a reader on the edge of their seats. Too often though, it slowed to snail's pace, bogged down in repetitiveness and side lines. Whilst the Halifax / Noble dance was all a bit predictable, the biggest problem for this reader was the way that big things just seemed to disappear into the ether. There is also Noble's tendency to move around a lot, which meant that the action seemed to be constantly packing up and going somewhere else, a metaphor that never quite became clear. Perhaps the biggest problem of all was that there were such big stakes in this mysterious weapons system, that one of the aspects of the plot around this just. never. made. sense. And came and went in the blink of an eye. As that resolution kind of collapsed into place, this reader was left wondering why the very long build up.
Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by Australians and New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction.
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