FICTION
The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel by Taylor Stevens (Crown Publishers)
Taylor Stevens’ 2010 debut, “The Informationist,” was a smartly written action thriller featuring a freelance espionage agent whose survival skills and intellect were wrought out of a violent past, and whose ability to extract herself from harrowing situations in which she is heavily outnumbered is arguably matched only by James Bond (and possibly Batman).
Now Vanessa “Michael” Munroe is back in “The Innocent,” having agreed to rescue a child who was abducted eight years earlier and brought into a secretive and well-protected cult known as The Chosen, based in Argentina. The people who have hired her are survivors of that cult. They understand the mind-set, and while their insights are a boon for Munroe, their participation threatens a successful extraction.
Munroe is plagued by nightmares in which she relives the violence from her last mission, and she’s turned to self-medicating to combat them. While the nightmares are depicted just as terrifyingly as the waking dangers that Munroe faces — the toll they take on her psyche is vividly described — the dangers inherent in her drug use never quite materialize in the same way.
And maybe they’re not supposed to. Munroe is trusted by readers. Her team may protest and worry, but we know she’ll emerge victorious. Scarred, but victorious.
Fans of thrillers who haven’t yet discovered Stevens are in for a treat, though starting with “The Informationist” is recommended. Those who have eagerly awaited this sequel will be delighted to find the same intelligent writing, masterful pacing, and tense and fluid action scenes that feel ready-made for the cinema, and an intensely emotional core that lends Stevens’ novel a depth not often found in the genre.
Michelle Weiner, The Associated Press
NONFICTION
Lone Star Law: A Legal History of Texas by Michael Ariens (Texas Tech University Press)
“Lone Star Law” is a superb book that examines the legal system in Texas, from the Canary Islanders who settled in San Antonio to the modern era of the mega-law firms in Houston and Dallas. Michael Ariens uses historical anecdotes from the state’s colorful past to explain the establishment and evolution of the law and Texas as a colony, a Republic and a state.
The book begins with Spanish explorers, the founding of the missions along the San Antonio River in the 1700s, and moves quickly to Stephen F. Austin, the colonists and their tensions with the Mexican government to the south.
The book examines post-slavery Texas, and the role of the Texas Rangers and their racially polarizing enforcement of the state’s laws. Ariens gives a sobering account of lynching and its racial inequities, which account for some of the underpinnings of many myths about Texas and its frontier approach to law.
The story of Gregorio Cortez, the Texas Rangers and the Bandit War of 1915 is handled evenly and given fair assessment of law and enforcement during that era, as seen differently by Anglos and Latinos. “Murders by Mexicano bandits were reciprocated by Texas Rangers, and the cycle of violence became more vicious as vengeance and cruelty on both sides intensified,” Ariens writes.
Gender inequities in marital law are spelled out in a chapter on family law that includes bigamy, illegitimacy and adultery. Texas law declared that a “cuckolded husband,” but not a wife, could justifiably kill the lover of his spouse provided that the act occurred before the parties “separated.”
Civil rights, desegregation and affirmative action, the Hopwood vs. Texas case in 1996, are brought to light in another chapter dealing with social change. Ariens delivers a well-written tome on the history of law in the Lone Star state, warts and all.
The book will serve as a great resource for historians interested in some of the most colorful and disturbing eras of the state’s past.
It also is an entertaining read for all those fascinated by the multinational heritage of frontier justice.
Gary Martin, San Antonio Express-News
