Hour of the Rat

April 1, 2013
Brackmann’s finely honed second thriller featuring Ellie McEnroe (after 2010’s Rock Paper Tiger) finds the Iraq war vet working in China as an art dealer for political fugitive Lao Zhang. The good news: Ellie loves living in Beijing, and her business is thriving. The bad news: her ne’er-do-well mother is staying with her, and fellow vet Doug “Dog” Turner’s brother, Jason, has gone missing somewhere in China. Ellie decides to ask around about Jason, but must tread carefully, as she’s still under surveillance by the Chinese secret police, who at one point haul her in “for tea.” After her release, Ellie travels into the countryside with her mother looking for Jason, an activist on the run from shadowy Chinese and American businessmen. Brackmann is as adept at bringing China’s densely populated cities and breathtaking landscapes to life as she is at depicting her flawed but appealing characters and twists and turns galore. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown.

May 1, 2013
Brackmann resurrects her war-weary heroine Ellie McEnroe and sets her off in a new adventure in this follow-up to her first novel (Rock Paper Tiger, 2010). Ellie, or Yili, as she is known in China, represents a major Chinese artist, but she has to walk a careful and very thin line to avoid ending up the focal point of the Chinese police, who are very interested in both that artist and his activities. When she's picked up for questioning and comes away convinced that it's time for them to lay low, she sees the opportunity to leave town and do a friend a favor at the same time. If only she didn't have to drag her mother and her mom's latest boyfriend, a nice, older Chinese guy named Andy, with her, it might be perfect, but alas, mom is visiting China and shows no inclination of returning home to the U.S. So when Doug, whom she knows as Dog, asks her to find his brother, Jason, Ellie, mom and Andy set off to find him. Andy and mom keep busy seeing the sights, but Ellie, who left Iraq with a badly injured leg, starts inquiring about the missing Jason and discovers that Dog's brother is a lot more than he seems at first. After being followed, attacked and interrogated, Ellie finds herself getting closer to the truth, but the real question is: How much of it does she really want to know? Brackmann's easy familiarity with everyday life in China lends a fascinating multiculturalism to her writing. Nods to local cuisine, Chinese slang and dress help paint a vivid picture of that country. What the story lacks is focus; most of the time that Ellie is looking for Jason, she seems to be wandering around without a specific goal. Brackmann's likable protagonist always entertains, but the plot lacks cohesiveness.

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