Lulu in Marrakech

When Lulu Sawyer heads to Morocco, she's on assignment for the CIA and hoping to heat up her relationship with a well-heeled expat Englishman. As she tracks the flow of money to radical Islamic groups, she pursues romance and watches the local society. Lulu is an unlikely, even unbelievable, CIA agent, so the light California-girl voice that narrator Justine Eyre chooses for her is just right. Eyre also manages to pace the book well--no mean feat, as the author can't seem to decide among sociological observation, romantic comedy, and mystery. While the accents chosen for the men, in particular, remind one of daytime soap opera, that doesn't damage the listening experience, which is a touch confused, but entertaining. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

July 7, 2008
Fans of Johnson's NBA finalist Le Divorce
will know what to expect: a fish-out-of-water story about a clash of cultures. Still, the tone and scope of this agreeable if quiet story owes more to the author's early work—Persian Nights
, in particular—than the better-known ones about Franco-American culture clashes. Like that 1987 book, this one has more than a soupçon of politics thrown into its cultural comedy of manners. Lulu Sawyer is a CIA agent who arrives in Morocco, both to rekindle her romance with worldly English boyfriend Ian and to trace the flow of Western money to radical Islamic groups. She meets with characters both Western and Eastern, which allows for some typically Johnsonian observations (“ not so common among Algerians.... It's usually the Turks,” opines one character). The book works best in small moments and in scenes involving the supporting characters, but the central plot—about Lulu and Ian's relationship—never quite catches fire, and Lulu-as-CIA-agent seems tired and unnecessary. Most fans will wade through the overdetermined plot to get to the sly asides and the astute observation that are and always have been Johnson's forte.