Lately, I was getting a bit frustrated with crime fiction. My standards are not absurdly high. I don't expect a thriller to have a Pulitzer Prize level of artistry, or be backed by years of research. I want to sit down, with a protagonist to root for, on a systematic quest to get the job down—all advanced by a sparse and breezy style. Here and there, interspersed with a fresh turn of the phrase and vivid descriptions. But book after book, all I read are unstable main characters, who have lost their way, and have no clue what they are doing. The male antihero has gone out of style; these are all female characters. And I have it with that subgenre.
I also find it quite strange that in the years when the stain on the word feminism washed away; when MeToo took hold; when TV rewards us with an overabundance of excellent female character, the thriller genre is still stuck on that nineties Julia Roberts-esque genre of a woman having to deal with a man she cannot fully trust. And she doesn't leave him or focuses on friends, or work, or her kids, or her passion. No, she is obsessed with this loser.
A rant is maybe not the way to start reviewing a book that is none of those things, but just let it be an introduction to the relief I felt when reading Sound of a Furious sky by H.N.Wake.
Let me start by saying that the main protagonist reminded me of FBI agent Dominique di Pierro in Mr. Robot, a character I adore, so that boded well. Here she is Domini/Dom, who works for the FBI and is given a simple assignment because she is under investigation for a prior case that took a significant toll on her.
An heiress hasn't come home, her one-percenters parents are worried, but even if the FBI investigates, they are confident the girl just went on a bender with her hot boyfriend or ran away or doesn't want to be found.
Well, you know what happens next, and you don't. This girl is called Hettie van Buren; she's a wallflower who works at the Museum for Natural History and has an unusual life, very unlike the airhead heiress Doni expected. When Domi finds out Hettie's boyfriend Micah was killed soon after her disappearance, she stumbles into a conspiracy that will take her into unexpected places.
I loved the surprise of the Honduran setting, the style,  all the side characters. But most of all, Dom. She is just a good girl left by her mother when she was young, who always took good care of her younger brother. She is determined, fierce, unflappable, with an interesting backstory involving her cop father, who killed himself.
Every female character in this book steers away from cliches. Like Hettie's friend and collogue, Mila Pascale, a researcher at the Museum, who, in her peculiar way, tries to help the investigation.
So glad I found this, well actually my husband did, he read it and immediately pushed it in my hands: 'read this you'll like it,' he said. And there's no more to it. He was right. Read this; you'll like this.