Invisible Armies [Hardcover]

Jon Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2007

From the mines of remote India, to the streets of Paris and the lights of Las Vegas, Danielle Leaf is pursued by a terrible secret.

Danielle came to India to find herself. Then she agreed to deliver a passport for her ex-boyfriend, legendary computer hacker Keiran Kell. It seemed like a simple favor for a friend - until she was abducted by thugs and imprisoned in a nightmarish cell.

She is soon joined by another captive: Laurent, a Foreign Legionnaire turned international activist. Their daring escape is only the beginning. Now Danielle has been drawn into a war between a transnational mining company that is poisoning thousands of Third World farmers, and the invisible armies of anti-corporate protestors who oppose it. A cause, finally, that she can believe in.

Amidst a whirlwind romance on the Goa coast, bloody street battles in Paris, cyberspace duels between shadowy hackers, and a bomb gone wrong in London, Danielle, Laurent and Keiran grow more deeply involved in this battle than they ever expected ... until the line between right and wrong begins to blur. For both sides of this war are willing to kill for their cause - and both sides hide deadly secrets.

Award-winning author Jon Evans returns with new heroes and a compulsive, fast-paced story that examines issues of corporate exploitation and the extreme edge of anti-globalization activism. Invisible Armies is Cold War suspense for the modern age, a thriller that looks behind the power of protests and the politics of big business.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following his Arthur Ellis Award– winning debut, Dark Places, Evans forays into corporate malfeasance versus organized protest, but disappoints. A former Infosys project manager living in Bangalore, India, Danielle Leaf agrees to deliver a package for Keiran Kell, a London-based hacker. En route, Danielle is seized by thugs apparently in the employ of Kishkinda, a megacorporation that has been blamed by activists for industrial pollution that has plagued the Bangalore area. While held captive, Danielle meets an attractive activist, also captive, Frenchman Laurent. As the two conspire to escape, Laurent tells Danielle that the package's intended recipient, Jaylitha, who had been doing research to build a case against Kishkinda, has been gruesomely murdered. After Laurent's martial arts skills free them, the pair undertake a series of dangerous escapades, with Danielle suspecting her ally may not be fully trustworthy. Danielle is less than plausible as an action hero, and Evans's take on globalization and its discontents is less than convincing. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Evans, who has been carving a niche for himself as the author of travel thrillers—Dark Places (2004), The Blood Price (2005)—returns with another entertaining adventure. Danielle Leaf was just doing a favor for a friend, delivering a passport to a woman in India. Abducted and thrown in a dank cell, Danielle is utterly confused until a fellow prisoner explains that she has stumbled into the middle of a battle between a multinational mining company and a determined and potentially violent group of protestors. Escaping from their captors, Danielle and her new friend, the charming Laurent, run for safety. Moving at a brisk clip, the story ranges from rural India to Paris to London, blurring the line between good and evil along the way until it pretty much ceases to exist. Evans, something of a globetrotting adventurer himself, keeps growing as a storyteller, and this is his most accomplished thriller yet. Pitt, David
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (June 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312368674
• ISBN-13: 978-0312368678
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,431,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I always wanted to be a writer. I travel a lot - more than 70 countries across six continents, to date. My novel DARK PLACES won Canada's Arthur Ellis Award, and has been translated into Dutch, German, and Japanese; my recent Vertigo Crime graphic novel THE EXECUTOR was nominated for a Spinetingler Award, appeared on several best-of-the-year-lists, and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. My most recent book, and I think my favorite, is my "children's book for grown-ups" BEASTS OF NEW YORK. I'm not so secretly planning to write a sequel or two. I write novels, scripts, magazine journalism, a weekly column for the irreverent tech site TechCrunch, and software. (If you're a traveller and you have an iPhone or an Android phone, check out my free app iTravelFree.) It is fair to say that I am easily bored.

For far, far more about me than you probably ever wanted to know, see my web site rezendi.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evans' best book yet!, July 6, 2007

By 

Sarah V. Langan (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Invisible Armies (Hardcover)

As a previous commenter wrote, Evans has invented a new genre-- travelogue as thriller. He's been all over the world, and he writes about it with authority and compassion. This his best work to date. It's a savvy and nuanced page-turner about multi-national corporations and the zealots who oppose them. PW's review doesn't give it the credit it deserves. This is not a formulaic story about Danielle Leaf the action hero. It's about her awakening as a human being. The book examines issues of individual culpability and the American character, and it's smart enough not to point fingers. For good measure, it also gives a bird's eye view of the fascinating techie underground. I totally want to go to defcon now. I absolutely loved this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A 5-Star book of WOW writing, September 6, 2007

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Invisible Armies (Paperback)

Danielle Leaf, in India to study yoga at an ashram, agrees to deliver a passport to a woman in a remote village at the request of her old friend/boyfriend, Keiran Kell. What begins as an afternoon motorcycle ride thrusts Danielle into a maelstrom of intrigue, conspiracy, anti-corporate protest marches, high-tech espionage, and several life-threatening situations.

That Keiran is a genius computer hacker both complicates and alleviates the problems they fall victim to once the plot is set in motion. They find themselves involved in a mysterious war between a strange multinational corporation and a well-organized anti-globalization protest movement. And behind the obvious conspiracy is an even deadlier secret.

Jon Evans, winner of the 2005 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, has put together a book that is a page-turner from the very beginning. As the story races along through India, France, England and the United States, it is hard to get anything done-other than reading.

Danielle is an extremely likeable character and her cohorts and enemies are also interesting.

Not only is the book exciting and peopled with fascinating types, it also touches on some very real and thought provoking issues:

1. Can computer hackers really get into all kinds of "secure" systems?

2. Is there a possibility that drug companies run tests on human subjects in remote areas?

3. Are any of us safe from corporate/medical/ conspiracies if they are taking place?

These and more are crafted into this novel. The book would make a terrific movie, but even lacking that venue I heartily recommend it. I rarely read thrillers, but this one hooked me from start to finish.

NOTE: Jon's first novel, Dark Places (called Trail Of The Dead in the UK) won an Arthur Ellis Award. Booklist called his second book, The Blood Price, "fantastic," and Publishers Weekly praised it as "a highly readable, inventive thriller." His next, The Night of Knives, is slated for UK publication in December 2007 (US date to be announced).

Armchair Interviews says: Buy this book and get hooked on it yourself.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could not put it down, April 29, 2009

By 

Michael JP (Long Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Invisible Armies (Hardcover)

I read after I get into bed, sometimes only a page or 2. Not with this book. I found the character extremely engaging. And while the female lead starts a somewhat of spoiled brat her journey thru the book had me concerned as if she was my little sister.

It has some delicious twists.