American Spy

"Lauren Wilkinson’s book follows Marie Mitchell, an ex-FBI agent who has fled to Martinique after being attacked by someone connected to her past – while serving in the Bureau, she was recruited by the CIA to cozy up, and possibly seduce, the president of Burkina Faso. The book is a beautifully paced novel and a promising debut from a writer who’s not content to rely on the settled tropes of any literary genre – it’s an excellent thriller as well as a deeply intelligent literary novel that tackles issues of politics, race and gender in a way that’s never didactic."