Scapegoat (Rennie Vogel Intrigue #2) in Mostly Sapphic

Jan 09, 2012 MEC rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery-suspense-crime, 2012-read-and-re-read

Definitely recommended. Scapegoat is a follow up novel to Miles to Go: A Rennie Vogel Intrigue and takes place some time after the events in that novel. Rennie and Hannah are both dealing with the aftermath of the Tajikistan mission ... or not dealing with it. Rennie is basically a mess - relegated to an analyst in Istanbul, she struggles with what happened and her disillusionment with her superiors. Hannah is doing a bit better, but still grappling with finding her place after everything that h Definitely recommended. Scapegoat is a follow up novel to Miles to Go: A Rennie Vogel Intrigue and takes place some time after the events in that novel. Rennie and Hannah are both dealing with the aftermath of the Tajikistan mission ... or not dealing with it. Rennie is basically a mess - relegated to an analyst in Istanbul, she struggles with what happened and her disillusionment with her superiors. Hannah is doing a bit better, but still grappling with finding her place after everything that happened.

It was refreshing to see that there wasn't a pat HEA after the first novel - bad things happened and both Rennie and Hannah are struggling with that - and this gives the reader an even better understanding of both characters.

After hitting bottom, Rennie is recruited to join a mysterious Foundation that seems to have the same ideals and goals she had, but meeting the other members of her newly formed team you have to wonder.

Don't worry, this isn't a maudlin or introspective book - there's plenty of action and intrigue as both Rennie and Hannah are seperately drawn into a rather nasty plot - and Roberston builds a plausible situation as well as ratchets up the suspense so you don't want to put the book down until you find out how it will all end.

Roberston touches on some pretty heavy ideas (and ideologies) around domestic terrorism/militias and presents them in such a way that the you can understand why some of the characters were drawn to those things - it helps that most of these characters were fleshed out and three dimensional rather than complete fanatics.

The book is told through muliple viewpoints to allow the reader a wider scope in what is going on and how everything comes together. If you're reading the epub version, it can be a bit disconcerting as the section breaks between viewpoints didn't make it through the conversion. One of the POVs is the bad guy's ... which is not one of my favourite things. Roberston carries it off well - unfortunately, he was the one character that just didn't really fleshed out as well as the other supporting characters. I still don't know why he did what he did (and he did a lot) but that may be the point ... sometimes there just isn't a good reason.

The set up of the book and the attention Roberston put into the supporting characters makes me think (hope) that there will be more to come in this series. I just hope she writes fast.

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