** spoiler alert ** This was an unexpected pleasure. I bought the ebook because it was inexpensive I liked the synopsis. I usually enjoy anti-heroes and secret society plots, and that was a big part of the entertainment, but the depth grows as the story progresses.

Jane is a reckless kid who grows up with distant family members, after an unspecified event makes it impossible for her single mother to keep her. In a very small town with no friends or even acquaintances, she does her best to find trouble. She unwittingly finds out the high school janitor is a serial killer and pedophile. Her experience with the police has made her reluctant to call them without proof, and she ends up in the back of the janitor's van while he looks for victims. After a close call, she is rescued from his house, and tells the police what she's seen. Unfortunately, the evidence is hidden by then, and she is considered unreliable.

The janitor waits for the proverbial dark and stormy night to go to her house and kill her, but Jane has been scouted by a secret organization that fights evil in absurdly maintained secrecy. A toy gun appears just in time for her to shoot the janitor, and she passes out. When she awakes safe in her own bed, there is no sign of the adventure, but a strange coin to prove it did happen.

There are sporadic mentions of her brother Phil, the good child and their mother's favourite. He is the subject of a rather large plot twist, but also the only friendly face for Jane throughout a troubled life. She uses drugs and sex recreationally, not without some guilt and consequences. Her jobs are all fly-by-night for low pay. She is still prone to trouble and antisocial to just about everybody.

More than half her lifetime passes before she is called upon again, mysteriously summoned to audition for Bad Monkeys. Her handler is tolerant of her impulse control issues, and tries to give her many chances to channel her aggression and problems with authority. Through many tests, Jane learns the seriousness of her new calling. Ultimately, she is judged for her actions.

The main plot is the action plot, which was exciting and surprising. Without spoiling the many really interesting ideas, it has a paranoid hyperactivity that simulates Jane's own feelings. There is a feeling of perhaps exploiting misery by enjoying the take downs of the bad monkeys, a sense of guilt that is particularly relevant as the mysteries are decoded.

The labyrinthine organization Jane works for, and the opposing side with equal complexity are a well realized series of reveals. Everything fits together, to make a kind of experimental organic logic. Even Jane's gung-ho antics are based on a real human feeling of wanting to do something important. Where the book really doubled in value for me was the spin by the last chapter, when we find out good and evil are everywhere and all the time. The philosophy isn't heavy or overwhelming, but by the end you can look back over the whole book and see thread of it coalescing until the climax.

I have a soft spot for twisty books that wrap up all the angles well, and this one is an excellent example. For all the chaos of events, all the pieces fit together to give a portrait of Jane as a crime-fighting loose cannon, and a threat just as evil as some of the people she's trying to stop.