Hailey's War

April 19, 2010
In this Kill Bill
–style revenge thriller from Compton (The 37th Hour
), 24-year-old Hailey Cane, a San Francisco bike messenger, throws herself into the belly of the beast to atone for past sins. After washing out of West Point for reasons she's hiding, and fleeing Los Angeles after accidentally killing the only son of a dangerous music mogul, fearless Hailey teams with the Trece Sucias, a Latina gang, and takes on what turns out to be the mission of a lifetime—escorting a young woman back to Mexico. But her charge brings along more baggage than what fits into the V6 Impala rented for the drive. Despite Compton's efforts to give her heroine complexity, Hailey is mostly rough exterior. Minus an icky attraction to her drawly cousin, CJ, and her occasional hobby of talking people down from the Golden Gate Bridge, she has no soft inside. It's hard to sympathize, even in the face of her brutal torture, when the only war this soldier is fighting is the one she started herself.

May 1, 2010
An army brat, Hailey Cain left West Point near the end of her fourth year and became a bike messenger in San Francisco. She counts only two people close to her: her cousin CJ Mooney, a successful music producer, and Serena Delgadillo, leader of a female gang in L.A. At Serenas request, Hailey drives undocumented Nidia Hernandez to her grandmothers home in Mexico. But the trip is aborted when Hailey is shot and left for dead and Nidia, pregnant with the grandson and only possible heir of powerful Anton Skouras, is kidnapped, presumably because Skouras wants the child. Finding and protecting Nidia becomes a point of honor for Hailey, whose rigorous army training serves her well as she becomes a target of Skouras forces. The resolution is neatly symmetrical, with Haileys backstory revealed only in the final pages. Compton (The 37th Hour, 2004, and Sympathy betweeen Humans, 2005) has a definite gift for portraying flawed, multidimensional characters, and Hailey may be her most compelling creation so far.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)