Wednesday: Alice MacKenzie

Back to work today.  It wasn’t dreadful but the 800+ emails I had to wade through did feel tedious.

I read this recently while on holiday.  They do say never judge a book by its cover. Unless it’s this one - in which case, please do.  Oh my days, it was as dire as it looks.  You may well ask why I read it?  It was written by a friend of a friend in Canada who gifted us a copy and I was curious.  Seriously, though, how many unnecessary plot twists can you get into a novel?  Lots, it seems…….

My favourite comment when we met the author was when he told us that a friend of his, called Peggy Barclay, had modelled for the cover, and people in Ottawa, where she lived, would stop her on the street and say: ‘Aren’t you Alice MacKenzie?’.  Wishful thinking, methinks.

The plot synopsis in short, is that Alice is a school teacher in her 60s in Ottawa who also works deep cover as a secret agent.  She is tasked with uncovering a pedophile ring, run by right wing extremists who are also recruiting for ISIS.  She is joined by a varying cast, including her octogenarian aunt who is a dab hand at karate and………plot spoiler…….ends up defecting to ISIS.  And that’s the most basic outline.  Oh, and Alice speaks at least ten languages fluently, including several obscure Khmer dialects.  

Suffice to say, there were plenty of hoots of derision as I was reading it (encouraged by K who read it a little while ago).