Rating: WORTHY!
This was a great novel which I really enjoyed. The first delight was to find a novel with an older female main character. It's nice to know that not all authors think that women who are beyond their twenties are uninteresting and not worth writing about! The second delight was in that this character was a sociopath (not to be confused with a psychopath!) who worked for the FBI, and had to be constantly on the alert not to expose her anti-social tendencies. Indeed, those tendencies were the very reason she made her way into the FBI. The structure of a law-enforcement agency was what helped her to conform to societal norms and fit in, and she was good at what she did.
The novel was well-written, and moved at a good pace without rushing. I felt that maybe it could have been tightened a little bit, and the romantic (if that can be applied where a sociopath is concerned!) dalliance wasn't necessary (not every woman needs to be paired with a man - and vice-versa - to make a story readable and enjoyable), but it wasn't obnoxious, either, so it didn't spoil the story for me.
The plot revolves around an odd assortment of people dying or disappearing, and investigation reveals that they all seem to be connected with rare earths, which are employed in hi-tech devices. The novel is up to date, too, since rare earths are pretty much cornered by China, and if it so chose, it could cripple the west's ability to build things like computers, tablets and phones. Not that we in the west build very many of those these days. They're all imported, which is another security weakness.
The FBI is investigating these events, and the agent starts running afoul of a dedicatedly evil man who is willing to stop at nothing to achieve the success he craves and believes he deserves. But someone is helping him, and that someone might well be in the FBI.
I enjoyed this story, and read it avidly. It felt a bit long to me, but it was enjoyable nonetheless, and I fully recommend it as a worthy read.
