01/23/2023
“It was only a matter of time before a single girl, without military training, and alone in the jungle, would be caught,” a private-industry intelligence contractor muses early in Born’s hard-edged thriller. That woman, Sara West, has lost everything but still must make her way, streaked in blood, across the mountains border from Uganda to the Congo, as a host of professional killers—American mercs, Russia’s spetsnaz forces—hunt for her and the secrets she had the misfortune to discover. On a research trip with her father and her husband, both botanists, Sara and co. found in the deepest jungle a downed Nazi plane … and a tranche of documents outlining Hitler’s contingency plans.
Born establishes this conflict and its players with convincing detail, briskly running down backstories on an international cast, while priming readers’ anticipation of the revelation of the prize that these competing spies and soldiers are willing to kill for. That prize: documents about a fortune “hidden outside Germany behind a web of front companies, banks and trusts,” set aside to fund the rise of a fourth Reich, and a list of the Reich’s “Circle of Friends,” which could still, all these decades later, destroy reputations around the globe. The action is raw and wrenching, which makes the chase all the more frightening.
On the run, Sara finds herself surprised at her own capabilities. Born’s accounts of her stealth-kills and trap setting are persuasively detailed; at times, the action occurs from the perspective of the men chasing her, edging toward survival-horror, with the hero as monster. That level of detail is consistent throughout the novel, occasionally slowing the narrative momentum, especially in the opening chapters. Dialogue is crisp throughout, though, and the story picks up speed once a former CIA agent discovers Sara might not be the traitor he’s been told. The brutal jungle survival adventure is memorable, but it’s the uneasy alliances and Sara’s climactic plan back in civilization that are Born’s most suspenseful inventions.
Takeaway: This brutal jungle thriller pits a woman who’s discovered Nazi secrets against pro killers.
Great for fans of: Wilbur Smith, Frederick Forsyth.
Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A- Illustrations: N/A Editing: A- Marketing copy: B+
